I had a million things to do. Eeeek!
Fatty had the day off. Oh, I don’t care, come to work, take the day off, please yourself. However, when we are trying to get everything finished two days earlier than normal due to the public holiday on Monday, it seemed like an odd choice of day to take off. Whatever?
I headed home for lunch. The sun shone down. I’ve been going home for lunch for the last week, it’s nice.
I got a stick and unblocked the drain on the corner, which Sam wouldn’t let me unblock in the morning. The muck moved and the water flowed.
The day flowed nicely. On my own, Fatty away, the hours ticked like a well oiled machine.
Then, in the afternoon, that Sad Cow Coleman turned up after lunch unexpectedly. She proceeded to talk loudly into her phone, as she always does, like Adolph Hitler at a pep rally. Doesn’t she have a desk somewhere else where she can sit, other than here, and bore the crap out of everyone around her? The whole side of my floor is vacant since we lost the other project and yet she came and sat right next to me and proceeded to talk loudly into her phone.
Oh she is tiresome. Aggressive and humourless. She makes Kanye West look frivolous. She’s a lawyer. I am sure I am allergic to lawyers.
Apparently, she got married recently. I told F that I was positive same sex marriages were still not legal in Australia. F tut-tutted. (I love that one, because if you say being called a lesbian is an insult you are being homophobic)
I was frantically busy, getting everything done. I had a mountain of work to do. Then, instead of concentrating, all I could hear was Sad Cow Coleman’s voice. Grrr! I put my headphones on, but it was hot and the sweat started to run down the sides of my head and, besides, I could still hear her talking over the music, and i thought to myself, this is ridiculous. So I took the headphones off and played the music, as F and I do on Fridays.
It was working, it drowned her out.
When Sad Cow Coleman had finished her call, she leant over the patrician she asked me if I had headphones I could use. I told her that I had them on but I was sweating so badly under the heat of them and the hot day and they were terribly uncomfortable.
“I am so busy right now that I can’t afford to be tuning into your phone call.”
“Well, this is just apart of shearing an open-plan office.”
“You talk very loudly into your phone,” I said.
“Well, that is just a part of running a remote project.”
(I was remembering the last time she came over and sat next to me, I heard her say to someone she was sitting over here so she didn’t get disturbed) So, I thought to myself, she can come and sit right next to me, she can talk as loud as she likes into her phone, because that is just a part of what she has to do and I should either put up with it, or put my headphones on so that she can just do as she pleases. That is the message I got from her.
I put my headphones back on. I don’t want to be arguing with her. I don't have time to waste being distracted by her. I noticed a bit later when I went to the toilet that she was using one of the quiet rooms. Yes, lets us not skip over this point, we have purpose built quiet rooms for people to talk on the phone, rather than subject everyone in the open plan office to loud phone calls. So that amounted to her conceding to my point.
I laughed (nervously) to myself. Why do unpleasant people bring out the passive aggressive in me? I felt a little ashamed of my behaviour, (A small chill ran up my spine when I thought about what I’d done) but not too much, as I had too much else to think about.
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