MisterShouty

I’ve vented on several occasions about annoyances of office life, but a particularly lengthy occurrence of one office irritation this morning has reminded me that this is possibly the worst thing that I’m forced to endure in this environment.

Every office has meeting rooms. Their purpose is clear from the name – they’re for meetings! They are dedicated, closed off areas in which people can gather to have their discussions about anything and everything that needs discussing without disrupting the working day of anyone else in the building.

That in mind, why the fuck do so many people feel the need to hold their meetings at their desks, in the middle of the office causing maximum disruption to everyone around?

Is it simply a complete lack of consideration?
Is it a feeble attempt at marking territory, asserting authority?
Or is it a conscious decision to be the most annoying cunt they possibly can be?

It seems that these people always choose to congregate at a desk right by mine, having their supposedly important meeting and yelling at each other as loud as they can, creating a din that not even a good set of in-ear headphones can drown out. And to compound the annoyance further, the yelling is not even due to disagreements or the need to be heard over any other office noise. It’s just shouting for the sake of shouting, even though everyone they’re shouting at is less than 3 feet away from them.

All of this is bad enough, but another layer of mind-cracking irritation is added by the fact that, when one meeting starts up with the unnecessary shouting, there is always another that gathers within a minute or so and attempts to out-shout the first. This unbelievable row goes on for at least 15 minutes and leaves the ears of everyone around ringing for the rest of the day.

As unbelievable as it sounds, this phenomena isn’t even restricted to groups. The introduction of Skype to the office place as a means of communication with people off-site has led to the solo “Yelling Meeting”. People now initiate a Skype call with someone off site at 9am and sit yelling at them all fucking day. They’re using headphones of course, so all we hear is the one sided drone of banal everyday conversation, but at that annoying volume that everyone seems to speak when using a hands-free kit of any kind!

It’s becoming more and more impossible every day to achieve anywhere near the level of concentration required to do your job properly in an office environment.

I actually have a pair of earplugs in my desk drawer now – Headphones clearly aren’t up to the job, so these have become a necessity.

As you can see, they’re bright yellow, so hardly inconspicuous. Hopefully the message will get through, but I’m afraid that these office yellers aren’t the kind of people that notice anything around them that doesn’t actually directly involve them. They will happily witter on all day every day without it even occurring to them that they may be disrupting someone else’s work.

My only consolation is that they’ll provide me with the first few easy kills when I finally snap and bring a shotgun to the office!

~ by mistershouty on March 8, 2011.

Posted in General Misery, People Skills