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I love silence. I grew up the only child of a single mom. Silence was everywhere when I was a kid, and I lavished myself with it. My childhood pastimes were either lying in the backyard watching the clouds, or curling up with a book and losing hours amongst the soundless pages. To this day my favorite places have more in common acoustically with outer space than a school cafeteria. Idle chatter is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sins of man. How anyone could so senselessly slaughter perfectly pure silence with aimless noise is beyond me. If I ever get elected Supreme Leader, my first decree is mandatory quiet hours with violations punishable by labor camp. There’s nothing more valuable than peaceful, usable, inspiring silence. Sadly, my new coworkers don’t feel the same way.
One would think the people I work with could appreciate some quiet time. On any given day from about a half hour before the sun rises to a half hour after it sets, we’re talking to people. This would be fine if the conversations were worth a damn. It’s the same vapid monotonous chatter, differing only in the mouth comes from. It’s so repetitive I’ve had to start creating new ways to arrange the same two dozen or so words it takes to get someone on the course just to keep myself from going insane. Unfortunately, rather than assuaging my desire to sledgehammer my face into the computer, it just leaves the customer confused as to what the hell I’m saying. So, I resign to cycling through the same sentences, not unlike your customer service call center reps or drive-thru workers.
But every so often there’s a lull. Golfers stop coming through the door and the phone goes more than two minutes without boring its siren through my frontal lobe. It’s in these moments of respite I’ll tear from the pages of caffeine and nicotine addicts and use the time to restore my mental sanity with a little dose of my favorite drug. Pure, uncut silence. Except my coworkers won’t let me.
Rather than see these periods of pause as the precious gifts of peace they are, they treat them like a birthday piñata. The second there’s a break in the day they all pour pointless nonsense from their mouths like a busted levee, like they’ve been itching to get the noise out from inside them, unable to stand another moment deprived of their own voice. And it’s not like it’s anything meaningful either. We’re not pondering the ethics of economic diplomacy or strengthening each other’s values through a roundtable of struggles and character flaws, it’s just shooting the shit.
In the food pyramid of conversation, their incessant chatter is milk and dairy. They think it’s desirable, they think they’re doing themselves a favor consuming daily doses of pure organic, but really they’re hurtling towards diabetes just as fast as the guy double fisting Snicker bars. What’s worse, unlike your chocolate abusers, is that theirs are not victimless crimes. They’re not just warping and mushing their own brains with their perpetual blathering, they’re taking those words and blowing them right in my face like a full heater’s worth of secondhand smoke.
Well, I’m done with it. I can no longer abide these people squatting in the annals of my ears with their shopping carts of litter like talking points. I’ve tried everything I can think of to politely excuse myself from participating in their roundtable, and nothing’s worked. They’re immune to indifferent responses such as single words, grunts, and shoulder shrugs. They’re apparently so comfortable with the culture of the smartphone that having their conversation partner’s face buried in a screen or behind a book isn’t a deterrent. Hell, even when I wake up particularly epileptic and spend the day just under the surface of my threshold, irritably stumbling over sentences while I try to shield my eyes from any light brighter than a candle, they still charge right ahead, wedging their mindless droning into the already cacophonic rhythm of my throbbing temples.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I guess I need to just start telling them I don’t feel like talking, but I’m afraid I’m still so new that if I do, all I’ll accomplish is gaining a reputation for being unfriendly.
I’ve never been one for confrontation in the workplace. There’s nothing good that’ll come out of starting a disagreement with someone you see everyday, whom you don’t really know, in an environment with too many stressors and opportunities for things to be taken the wrong way and grudges to be held forever. But these are desperate times. There are only so many moments of silence in a workday. I can’t do 10 hours of endless talking. Nay, I won’t. If I can’t find a solution, I may have to quit and start a new life as a librarian or a Google Street View driver. Maybe things will get better once my new hire smell wears off and they figure out a little bit more of my personality. Until then, I’m stuck bolting out of the shop every time someone’s needed on the course so I can spend a few priceless minutes hearing nothing but the smooth purr of 10HP thundering down a cart path. .
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BBisgard45
Golf Pro in B/CS TX trying to trick the PGA into certifying me to give swing advice for a living.
@BrianBisgard
Team headphones all-day here. And if that doesn’t work you can just kill them.
I’m not allowed to use my headphones at work anymore. Apparently my boss thinks it makes me look like I’m not taking my job seriously.
My old boss wouldn’t let me use headphones either. Simply because he couldn’t yell from his office to get my attention. Then he gave me an office because he felt bad, so I can listen to music sans headphones.
Yeah I’m with JR on this. People are generally awful sacks of fecal matter with mouths so it’s okay to be Pro-Choice on office adults once you’ve met enough adult office people and gathered the data to make well informed decisions about your stance on people lol
Big silence guy here. I always get the “everything okay?” from people because I just like not talking. I’d try just giving them a blank stare regardless of what they say and see how they like that
“You’ve been so quiet over here I was wondering if you had even come in today”
*Internally* Thanks for letting me know that’s an option
*Externally* Smile with my mouth, eyes are dead “Heh”
Name checks out.
I’m the same way. It’s sooooo annoying. “Is something wrong? You haven’t said much today.”
Oh, so I constantly need to be talking so you’re at peace with my situation? Stay in your lane, Kathy.
Amen brother.
I have co-workers who routinely have 20-minute side conversations about absolutely nothing, then complain about staying until 7 pm because they haven’t finished their work.
People are the worst.
Haha hilarious! The same people who complain about how “busy” they are and have so much work to do, yet will spend hours of the work day walking around chatting with coworkers. Then they end up staying til 7pm then make snide remarks at you for “leaving early”.
My coworkers had a 32 minute conversation the other day about which pumpkin spice is the best pumpkin spice. I feel your pain.
I feel your pain man. 95% of my day is listening to middle-aged women talk way to each other way too loudly in Russian.
My office hasn’t heard of the silence/vibrate feature on their cellphones. Their more colorful ringtones include: the Deadpool theme song, the LSU fight song, and some sort of Aggie whoop/chanting combos.
We all have assholes in the office that aren’t self-aware and don’t realize we aren’t really listening to them while they keep going on and on about nonsensical bullshit. One of the many joys of the workplace.
Also, what did you shoot?
This sums up exactly why I hate working in an office everyday. Forcing small talk with annoying coworkers who I would never associate with otherwise is my definition of hell. I wear a headset all day, and they still come up and ask if Im on the phone, in hopes that they can tell me what their adorable little Jaiden or Aiden did yesterday.
Because of this, I am looking for work from home jobs so I dont have to deal with coworkers all day!
i used to be able to deal with my bimbo vapid co-workers for at least the first few days of the week, but now i walk in every monday morning thinking “god i hate these bitches.” this week’s highlights include a discussion on whether or not the Northern Lights and Aurora Borealis are the same thing, and the incessant utterance of the phrase “yes to the dress” by one of these morons who just recently got engaged. if you’re wondering where her wedding planning is at, dear God, SHE SAID YES TO THE DRESS.
I am also looking for work from home jobs.
Couldn’t agree more. Two of my co-workers like to have misery competitions in the cubicle next door to me. When it’s 9 AM on a Friday and I’m hungover trying to grind out stories to meet my deadline, I don’t want to hear about your mom’s stroke on Easter Sunday 15 years ago.
I have a coworker who sings songs out loud all day every day, but he only sings the same line/verse every time. Most frustrating person I’ve ever dealt with
I work in a large room filled with cubes with walls 5 ft tall. We have email, Skype messenger, and phones at all of our desks. Yet, there are three people in my office that insist on chatting about nothing all day at a shouting volume because they don’t sit next to each other and cant hear the other person over their pounding on their keyboard. With my headphones all the way up I can still follow the conversation.