Told you so.

So... at work, I am lucky enough to be in a pod of cubicles just outside the offices of my boss's boss and the offices of her cronies. I work with 3 others in that pod. We are loud. "M" is half deaf so yells like an Albino Shouting Gorilla. "KG" is less loud and really only reaches his loudest when he's trying to hear himself over "M." He's still loud, though. I am 3rd. I have a tendency to let people know how I really feel by speaking sweet words in a nasty tone of voice. "D" is the least loud. He, however, is still a tall fellow with a big voice. He would have to whisper to sound as quiet as some people. All of us are made louder by the fact that we have to hear ourselves over the TVs from credit and collections department, the constant chicken cackle coming from the offices, and of course "M." Don't get me wrong, "M" is not the problem. You see, we get these little notes and shit from time to time telling us to be quiet. It seems the boss's boss is being disturbed by our loudness. I would like to take this moment to go off subject and just comment on the fact that parents always forget what it was like to be a teenager and bosses always forget what it was like to actually work for a living. I'm sure, in her memories of her halcyon days in the customer service deaprtment at AT&T it was all quiet professionalism. Never a loud noise was made and never a laugh was shared. BULLSHIT. Anywho... back to the lesson at hand... Usually when we get these requests to quiet down it's because it's a slow or really stressful day and so we are goofing around to either occupy time or to help us relax and function. Yesterday, when the call came for us all to shut up, we were all working. No laughing, no yelling, no wookie noises. We were all on calls. All busy. Now that seems funny to me. That showed me that it had nothing to do with hef thinking we were being unprofessional or anything like that. It literally came down to the fact that she was being bothered by the noise. We have to deal with the constant clucking from the henhouses around us and we don't complain. Our offices don't have doors. Hers does. Seems to me that if she is bothered by the noise she could just shut her door. But why in the name of God would she take responsibility for her own comfort? She's a boss and therefore, by defautl, everything is someone else's fault. Even the military doesn't enforce responsibility for commanding officers anymore. In order to remedy this problem my boss put in a request which I found most flippant. I loved it but knew immediately that it wouldn't happen. My coworkers, one of them at least, was convinced that it was really going to happen. In fact my doubts were met with scoff and scorn. My boss asked that us loud people be moved to the other end of the department where we are too far from the offices to be noticed. He recognizes that the problem is not us but is actually his boss's uber sensitivity and general level of cuntish bitchyness. Oh yeah, you read it right. The official request for the move was made and so it was assumed that it was really going to happen. "Not so" I said. To my way of thinking it was not going to happen because: This boss's boss has to approve the move. She doesn't think it would benefit anyone to have quieter people near her office. She thinks that would not solve the problem but only move it. She doesn't realize the problem resides with her. She thinks the problem is that we are too loud. We have customers constantly asking up to speak up, we have to hear ourselves over each other. We are just doing our jobs. Obviously if, in the course of just doing our jobs the way we are supposed to do them, we are still too loud for her then it becomes official that the problem is her. The problem is her. Let me make it clear. Gail, grow a pair, be an adult, close your door, and shut up. I'm all over the place today. Not very cogent (something dirty 4 u). So, yeah, where was I? Yeah. The move is not going to happen. The boss's boss declined for the reasons I suspected. I was right. That's all, I guess. Kinda fell flat at the end there, didn't I? So, there was a fire alarm the other day. It was confirmed, after the fact, that it was a false alarm. However, a few moments after the alarm went off I grabbed my external hard drive and made for the door. This boss's boss I have been speaking of came out of her office and told us it was a false alarm and to get back to our desks. The alarm is still going off. It's painfully loud and designed to be at a frequency that makes your ass pucker and your eyeballs hurt but apparently we were to disregard the laws of the regulatory authority and the disregard the possible long term hearing loss that stems from exposure to sounds above 80-100db (depending on frequency) and sit at our desks. A few minutes later one of the boss's boss's other subordinates came by and said we could go outside. Some poor kid in the lobby had pulled the fire alarm and was subsequently beaten by his guardian, no doubt. Poor bastard. I don't blame him. Kids make mistakes. When I explain to the doctor that I have had a headache for 3 days straight and it started when I was forced to sit and listen to that fire alarm it will not be the kid who I am strangling in my imagination.