voices carry

One of the things I most look forward to in my post-Office Space renaissance this fall is leaving the cubicle-farm world behind.

My 'office' / 'cube' / whatever you'd like to call it is part of a 'quad', i.e. there are four people separated by a wall. Sure, it's better than having two people to a cube, but it still has it's annoyances. I get along well with my quad-neighbors in general. They're nice guys; we crack jokes and stay out of each others' business. But one guy- the one who is in the back half of the quad with me- sometimes pushes the limits of office relationships.

I noticed this one day when he started talking to me about personal matters that were happening between me and my girlfriend- I think he even referred to her by name. Strange, I thought... I don't remember ever telling him anything about her or about whatever it was he was talking about with me. A few more incidents like this and I realized that he had learned quite a bit about me from my end of whatever phone conversations I was having at work. When I decided to call him out on this, he just bragged about his 'super hearing' and reacted with one of his typical war-tales of having worked at the same company (here) for 3,000 years and how they used to have hahdwood floors and no cubicle walls so you could heah people from awl the way down the hawl (read this like you have lived in various suburbs of Boston for your entire life).

I'd say that I expressed my being uncomfortable and agitated about this, but anyone that knows me knows that I really don't know how to subtly get upset at someone (and when I do get upset, people think it's so funny that they provoke me until I throw bottles of mustard at them). But even if I got upset, what could I do about it? I knew that even if I told him to stop meddling into my personal life, a person can't just shut his ears and not hear what's going on around him ("earmuffs, kid!"). I don't own this office. I'm aware that every e-mail, instant messenger conversation, and blog entry I make from work can and probably is being read by some group of oompa loompas in some cave somewhere (hi, guys!), but for whatever reason I felt I could make at least some level of phone call to my girlfriend or other non-work friends with impunity. Yeah, maybe phone sex would be a bit inappropriate... but I had never felt self-conscious talking to my girlfriend about our weekend plans or paying a late telephone bill over the phone before this.

My neighbor seems like a bored old guy. Apparently he talks about us- his quad-mates- at home, and he'll tell us what his wife / daughter have to say about us at work the next day. Sometimes he'll just walk into my cube in a very deliberate manner and slowly sit down. It doesn't matter if I'm listening to my iPod or coding or actively trying to ignore him. And even if I have headphones on he'll start speaking to me. If he has nothing to say, he'll start digging up minutes from the last conversation we had. "So, did you tell Winnie what I told you yesterday?" "So, my daughtah is looking for an apahtment." "Got two milestones done today." He has learned that I don't do football conversations. Sometimes he'll try to bring the other quad-mates into our 'conversations'-- "you bettah not tell Jon, he's the big hawhncho around heah now!"

Winnie is looking for a new apartment since I am leaving Boston in the fall and she don't wanna make the move to NYC also (that's the Reader's Digest version, at least). She called me the other day about an apartment she wanted to check out and apparently mr. neighbor heard enough to realize she was moving. Cue the deliberate stroll, adjusting the pants, the lean on my cube-wall:
"So the lady's movin' out on ya?"

CRAP! Need a lie fast... of course since I don't listen to a word I say, I had forgotten what I had said to indicate that Winnie was leaving and moving to her own place, but I couldn't think of anything better than "oh, we're moving." There's a 73% chance that he saw right through that, but at least he knew better than to press the issue further. I haven't 'come out' to work yet about my plans for the fall (except to some friends, whoever may have found this blog, and the aforementioned oompa loompas) and I definitely don't want that knowledge to be leaked by some yenta like my neighbor before I'm ready to do so. The 'how many weeks notice?' issue will soon be the topic of another ranting blog entry.

He even once apparently overheard me on the phone telling my mom about a bonus I had received- I have no idea why I'd do this, but apparently I told her how much the bonus was- and mr. neighbor decided to mention it to another older employee who was talking to me in my cubicle. They struck up a conversation about how the old fogies around here (I think those were their words) never get recognized for nutthin'.

I suppose I should do something about this but you know what? I don't care. I'm outta here in a few months. And that keeps getting sweeter by the day.