Shut Up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!

Random gripe of the day:

When I eat lunch at work, I usually read.  I love reading, but often I only get about three pages read during my lunch hour.

Here’s what happens:  I sit down to read.  Three minutes later, someone will walk into the break room to get coffee.  They’ll talk to me the entire time, because humans are basically gibbering monkeys that are afraid their jaws will atrophy if they aren’t constantly making noise.  Okay, more realistically, they think it will be rude to walk by me without saying hello.  A note to such humans:  It is rude to speak to someone who is obviously reading.  But the way they figure it, they’re only taking three minutes out of my day, and that’s not enough to really interrupt my reading.  What they don’t seem to get is, thirty seconds after they walk out of the break room, someone else walks in the process starts all over.  My entire lunch hour ends up spent making small talk with twenty different coworkers, each of whom thinks they’re the only one I’ve spoken to all hour.

So, I started wearing earphones.  I can’t listen to music with lyrics while I read, but that’s fine, I have plenty of MP3s of instrumental music.  Movie soundtracks are my favorite, especially Danny Elfman.  Sometimes I’ll match the music to the fiction, like listening to John Williams while reading Star Wars novels.  I even listen to nature MP3s, like crashing waves  or thunderstorms, just to drown out my coworkers.  Once or twice I’ve forgotten my phone, and still wore the earphones to keep people from talking to me.  Yes, I’m antisocial, I’ll cop to that.  But I also just have different ideas about what should be considered rude.

The earphones/book combo keeps about half the employees from talking to me.  Some of them even look a little relieved, like “Good, he has earphones on, I don’t have to make small talk.”  Well, if you didn’t want to make small talk, why did you do it before?  Because for some reason you thought it would be rude to ignore someone who might as well be wearing a “Do Not Disturb” sign?  I swear, our society has issues.  Anyway, as I was saying, earphones+book stops half the yakkers.  But the other half just greet me louder.  “HI MATT, HOW ARE YOU DOING?  IS YOUR WIFE DOING OKAY?  HOW’S THE CAR?  DID YOU WATCH THAT SPORTSBALL GAME LAST NIGHT?  MY KID JUST TURNED THREE, ISN’T THAT GREAT?”  Oh, thank goodness you came along.  I’ve been dying to speak to someone, but I accidentally got these earphones stuck in my ears.  I’ve been waiting all lunch hour for someone loud enough to talk to over my music.

This is why I prefer to eat lunch in my car, but that’s only feasible for about half the year.

Look, let me make this clear for those in the back:

It is not rude to ignore someone who obviously wants to be ignored.

It is rude to interrupt someone who is reading.

It is rude to engage someone who is listening to earphones.

If someone is both wearing earphones and reading, it is a clear sign that they do not want your attention.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a coworker in the break room, or a single woman on a bus, these are signs that the person doesn’t want to be disturbed.  Like a rattlesnake’s rattle, or the quills on a porcupine, this is how nature says “Go Away.”  It’s not a secret, it’s blatantly obvious, and if you don’t pick up on these signals, you’re an idiot.  Just.  Shut.  Up.

You would think it gets better when two coworkers come into the break room at once, because they’ll talk to each other.  But people are just loud in general.  They’ll stand right next to each other and shout loud enough to hear across the building.  They’re not angry, they’re not arguing, this just seems to be how people speak when they’re happy.  I can turn my music up until my ears hurt, and I’ll still hear them over it.  Heck, it’s not just in the break room.  When I’m working at my desk, I can hear every single word of three distinct conversations, all from different directions, each over 50 feet away, sometimes in offices with closed doors.  Seriously, why do people shout at each other when they’re standing three feet apart?  Indoor voices, people!  And don’t get me started on people who insist on using speakerphones.

Another weird phenomenon I’ve noticed:  When an employee gets a personal call on his cell phone, he will walk somewhere else to have a more private conversation.  Makes sense.  Except, he won’t actually go somewhere that doesn’t have people, all that matters to him is getting away from his own department.  So he’ll walk away from one group of people, only to disturb a different group of people.  Apparently it’s socially acceptable to annoy your coworkers as long as they’re not the ones you specifically have to work with.  For some reason, my cubicle wall seems to be the popular hangout for other departments to make private cell phone calls.

*Sigh*  At least I know I’m not going deaf.