Cube Living is the Best!

Okay, weird, but, funny. So, I had to share...

I had come to work, on what would have been my third day on this new job of mine—that I’ve now been in for a couple weeks, and I had thought I was alone. I was in early. (Gotta get that running start.) Not a single other soul appeared to be present.

I was wrong. I was not alone. I was definitely not alone.

Suddenly I can hear all kinds of bodily bedlam, mostly neck-up noises, coming from this guy. I can't see my new noise-making neighbor. He's either the cube dweller directly opposite of me, sharing the common cube wall, or, from what I can make out by how far away the sounds of the gurgle madhouse appear to be, I am thinking he could also be the cube just on the other side of the cube on the other side of me.

Either way, I knew he was somewhere tucked against the back wall of the office, like me, at the end of his respective cube row (whichever one cube row that is). And, unless I go strolling up and down the cube rows to confirm where he might be, which I had no intention of doing, I'm not going to see him and know for sure.

Shoot, can you imagine? Him, mid-cough, then, suddenly, there is me, standing upon him stupidly. “Oh… Hi? Err, uh, just wanted to make sure you weren’t chocking.”

Truth is, still haven't seen or named this nonharmonious human who is filling up the office air-space soup, this hell I’ve never been able to swallow, with his own special spice. Go cube living! It’s such a pleasure: spending 8 hours of your day with people you don’t call family or friends.

Anyway, I got the impression he was Asian by the sound of his noises. (Don't ask.) I know noises do not have an accent, or one would think they do not, and who knows the difference between an Asian man making a nose honk vs. a boring white-bread/European mut-mix girl like me snarling her nostrils, but in the first moments where his noises broke the silence, that’s what I’d thought: Hmmm…Asian, male, not tall. (Okay, so that describes half of the guys who I now work with, so I am not that clever, but still, there was an accent.)



Now, I've heard throat clears and people who are perpetual throat clear-ers. I've heard coughs. I've heard nose blowing. What this all sounds like coming out of him? Um, too much. He's got a virtual ear, nose, and throat symphony over there. It's a cacophony of grunts, sneezes, sniffs and barks.

I immediately thought, this whole discordance I've just been unwilling invited into (an invitation that will obviously be extended to me daily), these throat sputters, these allergic and/or nervous ahems, supported by variety of neck frog sounds he’s apparently trapped in his different hacks, is going to drive me nuts. I am going to jump out of the office window (that was supposed to be my office) just next to my cube. My only hope is to cut myself, as I break the glass on my way through the window, and bleed to death. Since, being on the first floor, I have no hope of dying from falling.

And, all morning, and the rest of that day, noisy-throat-guy’s neck hawks did drive me out of my mind. If I didn’t shoot myself, I wanted to shoot him. Or gag him, or do a number of things to him Alley McBeal might have done in a similar annoying office situation. I’d already imagine his head blown up a thousand different ways.

But the next morning, when I heard him at it again, and when I was just about to jump over the cube wall to tackle and muffle him for squeezing his nose into a tissue for the hundredth time, and for finishing off each squeak off with a yawn, or a sigh, or another ahem, or an eh…eh..Eh Ehhh!, out of where, and quite abruptly, noisy-throat-guy stops his own noises by starting a conversation.

Crap!? Is he schizophrenic, too? Is this another tick? How many personalities does he have in there? Is one personality doing the sneezing and another responsible for the coughing? I'm so screwed. What have I gotten myself into? I’m still working 9-5 in an office and now I’m being subjected to torture. WattatheF!

That’s it! I don’t want to work for a living any more. I hate people. I hate cube living. I hate noise from other people’s bodies if I am not sleeping with them. I hate florescent lights. My back hurts. This chair sucks. I want to go home. Where’s my lottery ticket?

And on and on my mind goes… Suicide is almost an option. There’s a 15th floor somewhere…

Joking aside, I know I didn't want to do mind numbing work anymore (like the last job with this company), but I had a corner before...to myself (well, almost to myself, spare the harmless enough, passive-aggressive, sexually promiscuous, pre-retiree who sat opposite of me, who had f'd with my allergies with her lotions and potions, and who pretended--when her music ear buds were in her ear, and the conversation wasn't about her--not to hear me talking to her).

Wait. Why is noisy-throat-guy talking so soft? Why is he questioning and answering himself. Aye, aye, aye. He really is not quite right. Uh, oh. No, no, no… Ah, man! He's just growled. And moaned? Now he's doing...? Whoa! Wa, wah, wait? Did he just say, "My baby?" Who's baby? Is he baby?
Sigh of relief. Ah. I see. He's talking to his baby. "Oh, baby. What you want?" I can hear him clearly speaking into a phone (now that I get that that is what he is doing.) He's asking, in a high pitched, but soft, voice (that squeaks like his nose), “What you want, baby? What you want me to do for you?”

As a reminder, we are now weeks into my new job, and I am here to tell you that these conversations with Baby go on 3, 4, 5, 6 times a day. Yet, over the weeks, somehow, having become armed with the knowledge that noisy-throat-guy is a soft talking, sex maniac who appears to be totally in love with his baby, I have come to kinda like my faceless throat clearing, trippy, possibly Asian, noisy-throat-guy.

He's good to his baby. He can go on with his quick throat chokes all he wants. I might want to kill him in another week or two, or on days I am extra tired, but for now, we're good.

Plus, and I could be totally wrong, I don’t think Baby is his wife. Of course, he may not even be married. But I’ve concluded that he is, or I’ve decided. Can’t decided which. Something tells me baby is his homosexual lover. That makes me like noisy-throat-guy even more. Edgy, Asain bad ass! Love that.

Oh, BTW, if I have it all wrong, if noisy-throat-guy does not have a homosexual lover, and/or is not cheating on his wife/girlfriend (or whoever the woman is he also talks to all day but does not call baby), and if for any reason my blog blows up and the people I work with find out about/read my blog, and try to figure out who noisy-throat-guy is and if he is, indeed, gay, let’s remember that I am a liar. I made this all up. There is no noisy-throat-guy.

Okay, there. The whole thing was a lie. I just didn’t have anything interesting to say today. And I love cube living. Who wouldn’t want to work in an office? It’s warm, and dry, and has controlled air. (My chair still sucks, though! Man, my friggen back is killing me.)

Keep being fabulous! (All of you, even my little sex-maniac noise maker!)