Yes, some Jews observe the 3rd Commandment in this manner. Me? I figure God isn’t his name, it’s his job title.
Back to the OP, could the loud co-worker have a hearing problem? Maybe the poster should gripe to HR.
A great plan, really, but every time I go to take a gulp she starts talking, it startles me, and I have to pour another!
I’ve thought about it, but then I’d be the only one, and it would seem sooooooooooo insensitive to her feel-bads. 
And after a brief talking-to I’m sure it would be right back to where it was within a week - it’s who she is, I don’t think that can change.
Amen.
A few years back I brought a case of hard cider to work to share with my employees. One employee (no longer an employee) pointed out that I wasn’t allowed to drink at work. I explained that it was my business, and I made the rules. All employees were over 21, so? She continued to insist that it was “illegal”.
I drank her share.
I am SO damn lucky that I can work at home. I can drink WHILE I work.
Sadly this is me. As my mother (and everyone else) used to say… “Enright3, your voice really carries!”
So I’m loud; but I also whistle, or drum fingers, or shake my foot sometimes without realizing it. My wife thinks it’s a coping mechanism for ADD. Could be I suppose. The point is; I know I do it, and I’m really sorry that I do it, because I don’t want to be “That Guy.” I have no problem when someone says “knock it off!” Evidently I favor Christmas tunes! Who knew?
The flip side of this is a pet peeve of mine. A new occupant of an office near mine dropped by my office to give me the “we’ve never met; I’m your new office neighbor and I’d like to introduce myself” speech. (She’d been in the office for over a month and never said a word to me or anyone on my team) Then she finished up with the bomb “…and if you could stop whistling, I’d really appreciate it.” My intimidate thought was “Listen here you fake bitch. Don’t come over here with your bullshit platitudes with your sales 101 pitch like you want to meet me; but really as a nice way to get me to stop whistling.” A simple “Do you mind keeping it down?” or simply closing your door would be enough. You just marked yourself now as an insincere person. Not good.
So trying to abide by social niceties and introducing herself before asking you to stop whistling makes her the asshole? Better she should have just said, “hey, inconsiderate, oblivious coworker, STFU already”?
She is right. You are wrong. Stop whistling, stop drumming, jesus christ would you develop some self-awareness, and get medicated if you have ADD. Because you *are *“that guy.”
If you don’t have a problem with being shushed, then it’s incumbent upon you to bring that up to new neighbors. Because I guarantee that for every 1 coworker who’s willing to speak up, there are 5+ others who are suffering in miserable, passive silence. Assuming that you’re within earshot of multiple coworkers, of course.
Damn her for trying to say things in a nice way! :mad:
I leave my door closed, always. Just come on in if you need to, and I don’t care if someone thinks I’m unsociable. I really don’t. The ladies that work on the open floor adjacent to my office shout across to each other all damn day-I find it disruptive. If anyone ask why the closed door, I explain sweetly that i don’t want my radio (NPR at a low low volume) to disturb anyone. My god, the janitor comes up and it’s non-stop chatter and noise for 1/2 hr. every morning.
Back when I had an office, I’d do this. But I’d put a small note on the door at eye level that said, “Come in.”
I have a coworker who belches loudly, then asks, “Didjya get any onya?”
He also clears his throat constantly in a deep, guttural way.
He will often enter the room and immediately clap loudly. Sometimes, it’s a single giant clap. Other times he claps the “clap clap clappity clap - LET’S GO!” rhythm. And yes, he will often yell the “LET’S GO!”
I believe he received his PhD in Obnoxious Studies at the University of Kill Me Now.
The maid stops at the office next to mine and talks to my cow orker. For an hour.
We share the building with a day care business. On their break, the women go into a room, watch a blaring TV and scream at each other. One day I was fed up enough to walk down the hall and close their door.
It WAS closed. :rolleyes:
Edit: OK, TLDR summary. Yes, I do. I wish she’d win the lottery every day.
I work in a small office filled to capacity with about fourteen women and three men, so there is always a henhouse atmosphere, which I already don’t care for.
BUT!
Yes, we have our residential loud, obnoxious, braying, self-obsessed employee.
Every day, it’s a story she has to repeat about once an hour, or whenever someone new drops by her desk. It is recounted in what I’ll call Day At the Racetrack volumes. I try to drown her out with music in headphones, but to no avail. I experimented with it one day and had to turn the volume to near maximum to finally not hear her. That can’t work, so I deal with a tinny drone.
She has a quiet voice, I know she does, because she drops down to a conspiratorial whisper whenever she’s upset at a mistake anyone else made. Which is every day and every one, because that’s life. When it’s her mistake, she caws, “I did it! Yep! I did it! Nobody’s perfect! I made a mistake! I’m not the best! Do it all the time!”
And so on.
She had perhaps the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard on a woman, particularly in an office setting. I used to have to sit right next to her, and I finally got tired of it, and politely asked management if it could be toned down. Eight hours a day of hostile grousing was giving me headaches and the shakes. Another person there wanted to switch desks with me, so I eagerly agreed. The day of the switch, with the manager right there, she asked, “Do you hate me?”
I just sat there, stunned. I said nothing, because I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of any kind of answer. Who is that immature?
It doesn’t help that she can’t pronounce things.
It’s “obvuhsly” and “ideals” for “ideas” and “bedroom suit”, “pitchers” and so forth. She also says “You’re amaze.” and “Sor” for sorry. And her catchphrase, “PheNAWWWWWmenal!”
She “loves it” when people are angry. She brags about being a jerk and a bitch, reveling in her spiteful, aggressive, confrontational moods. She’s always threatening physical violence on people.
The most perplexing thing is that she’s well-loved.
Me? I’m the quiet one doing her work all day. I often wonder what they say about me when I’m gone, if anything. I’m the only person there that nobody asked for contact information for or requested to “friend” me on Facebook, so it can’t be anything good.
In fact…we hired to girls last year and they became instant friends, even if they sat on opposite sides of the room. I was teaching them how to do something one day, both at my desk observing and the one asked the other if she could friend her. Phones were whipped out and the deed was done. Awkward silence ensued.
After about five minutes, the first asked, “So…do you have…Facebook?” as if she were afraid I’d say yes. When I told her I no longer participated in social networking, I swear to God I felt a tension dissipating.
Am I just creepy or something?
Nerdessence, I used to work in an office with someone who reminds me of the woman you describe (right down to the mispronunciations and malapropisms… she used to say “archichoke” for “artichoke,” “precedence” for “precedent,” “supposably” for “supposedly,” and others. She was the CEO’'s admin asst, so one expected better language use from her).
Anyway, when she was in the office, there was always a buzz, and she was always at the center of it. She generated tension and intraoffice feuds and poured fuel on tiffs that would have gone away on their own if ignored. When she was on vacation, everyone, even presumed mortal enemies, got along fine and the tension completely disappeared. As soon as she was back in the office, the emotional white water rapids started churning again.
I formed this theory that some people are like lightning rods for emotion. The gossip, everyday slights, hurt feelings, scandals, rumors, etc., swarm around them like moths around a light bulb. Like gravity. Like a bowling ball on a soft mattress surrounded by marbles that just naturally roll into the depression. She stirred the pot by her very personality and BEING.
One of the many reasons, I’m glad I’m a freelancer now and just pop into someone’s office for a bit, do my stuff, and leave. 
But I love hearing the stories.
ETA: You’re not creepy. You sound like you’re having a perfectly normal reaction to crap.
I have no idea why I thought I was the only person on the planet suffering this way, but clearly, loud, annoying coworkers are everywhere.
Yes, the whining, complaining, sighing, mumbling, rudeness to the people she’s supposed to be helping, loud phone calls that can be heard throughout the office, braying laugh all made me cringe repeatedly during the day. I sat at the cube adjoined to her, and when they were making modifications to the office, she refused to allow a barrier between us because that would cut her off from being the centre of her own office drama. Ditto with the suggestion that she move into the available office space. Nope, everyone needs to be part of her cloud of misery. As a person, I like her, we get along well enough, but as a coworker, her conduct is just unprofessionaland inconsiderate and the constant negativity was stressing me out.
I did speak to my boss about her and how she was affecting my ability to do my job. It seems that everyone just accepts her behaviour, or her boss is just too chicken shit to call her on it. Coworker is aware that she does these things, but just laughs about it. Yup, it’s a big joke, haha, that’s just her, haha.
Imagine my delight when after a year of this, I was given the opportunity to move back to my old desk. I can still hear the laugh, the overloud phone calls, but at least I’m not subjected to the constant stream of her personal monologue.
I thought maybe you used to work with me. I also had a co-worker named Steve who would make random animal noises. He would cluck, moo, baa, whinney, bark, you name it. I’m pretty sure this guy did it on purpose though.
We have an open-floor concept to my office. There’s groups of desks separated by half-walls, and then a few actual offices with doors around the outside of the floor. I also have a Loud Howard, and he works in the call center. You can hear him anywhere on the floor, even in an office with the door shut. What’s really fun is when he has to call someone in my department. I can hear both sides of the conversation.
One of the ladies who sits by me is a total sweetheart, but she never stops talking. She’s Indian, and she has that musical sounding accent if you know what I mean? She also speaks very softly, so her voice kind of has a lullabye effect. It’s really hard to stay awake sometimes with her around. Thank God for the Ipod and earbuds.
I’m so glad you started this thread. I too thought I was alone in this.
Everyone in my office is quite nice, but oh, dear Lord. The noise. The horrible, endless, noise. The woman in a cube head-to-head with me? Yep, she’s got the loud braying laughs, the screaming personal calls down the phone “MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM… YOU FLOOOOOOOOZY,” the endless minute narration of her baby’s gastrointestinal successes and failures. I feel guilty for hating her for the terrible horrible noise, but it was like a five-week vacation for me when she went on maternity leave.
Except.
The other main offender in the office, a gentleman who sits back to with the noisy lady, is a compulsive attention-seeker who must: 1) Demand many times daily that every person in the office watch his latest ‘hilarious video’ discovery on his phone / read the blog he found / laugh at his jokes; 2) Narrate his life for spoken approval: “I made the most delicious parmesan chicken on the grill last night;” 3) Eat noisily at his desk, multiple times per day, every day; 4) SNORK SNORK instead of blowing his noise - again, multiple times daily.
Yet these are fairly nice, harmless people. They simply have no volume control or sense that perhaps quiet is a good atmosphere for getting work done. And I have to say: as far as I can tell, I’m the only person in the office who really needs quiet to work efficiently. The other folks’ jobs seem to flow along just fine with continual conversation. Mine is research; I really want quiet.
Headphones are the only way I can get through my day. I desperately want noise-cancelling ones. Also, since I use them and don’t join in most of the conversations, I’m considered the anti-social one in the office. Small price to pay!