Since my first post yesterday my annoyance factor of CJ seems to have increased ten-fold. I think I’m getting slightly irrational about it all now, as every little thing she does seems to wind me up. To the point that I just spent a whole lunch break bitching about her with a girl from the same department. Thankfully she was sympathetic to my pain and has also cottoned on to how CJ is probably going to end up maimed or dead if she keeps going the way she is.
Yesterday afternoon CJ tried to engage in some chit chat and asked how I was. After my short muttered response she was still staring at me so I felt I should enquire about her day. Bad move, bad, bad move Nancy. She then launched into a massive rant about some meeting she’d been to that morning and how the people in it were incompetent, how she was ‘shocked’ at the state of some of the paperwork, how they didn’t do things like that in her old job.
“In my last job I worked on contracts worth multi millions!!”
Well bully for you.
The worst thing was that she was chewing an apple throughout all of this and so I was subjected to seeing bits of peel and mashed up fruit masticating around in her gob.
Today she seems to have continually eaten since I got into the office. Cereal, fruit, humus and carrots and cucumber, soup, noodles… And all the time ‘gak, gak, gak’. It’s so fucking rank, I mean is it much to ask that she can shut her mouth when she eats? I don’t want to hear how much she is enjoying her cucumber, or see it the 2nd time around. How the hell does she go on dinner dates? Imagine staring at that across a candle lit dinner table?!
But as much as this gets to me, as much as I want to smash her face off the desk so she can no longer chew anything, I just can’t bring myself to complain about it. I sit there while she eats, rocking in my seat, the sound of her chewing getting louder and louder between the muttering and sighs and I say nothing. I really don’t know how to approach the subject. My housemate has suggested a couple of ideas about comments and conversations I could have to drop hints but I just can’t do it. Call me chicken, call me gutless, call me British but it’s proving to be hard. Earlier I tried staring at her and she caught me:
“Oh sorry was I talking to myself?”
(Quick Nancy say something, now’s your chance – say “no but do you mind shutting your mouth when you chew because you’re making me feel physically ill” – go on, you can do it!)
“Er no you weren’t” (for once)
(Damn – well done Nancy)
“Ha ha, ahhhhhh, yeah I think it’s his fault (points to Moody NZ) – it must be catching, you’ll be doing it soon!”
“Probably not”
“Yeah, yeah, then I won’t look mad anymore!”
“No, then we’ll ALL look mad”
I-pod going on now.
Thursday 28 January 2010
Wednesday 27 January 2010
The Crown Jewels
We have a new girl, well I say new but she started in mid Dec, lets call her CJ. It’s new enough and she happens to live somewhere where the snow kept all those lucky bastards out of work for weeks on end so was hardly in the office until a fortnight ago (apparently she went a bit stir crazy and ended up buying things off cold callers “just to have someone to talk to” – er call your friends? Family?). I have the unfortunate task of sitting next to CJ(even though this does create a human barrier between me and the moody New Zealander) and in the past two weeks have discovered the following:
She talks to herself continuously. About anything, not just that under your breath swearing you might do occasionally or reading something out loud, I mean anything. It’s like her mouth is telling us about everything going on in her brain “riiiight, so who’s this email from then…?” or “I’ll get a cup of tea before I start that…” And it’s just loud enough for me to hear it all. I even caught her doing it in the toilets this morning.
She takes her handbag with her everywhere. To meetings, to the toilet, even to make a coffee. We’re not sure what she has in there, maybe the crown jewels? I’m tempted to swap it with a replica for the afternoon and find out.
She has no sense of humour. OK, so some of us here can be a little crude at times but she just doesn’t seem to get jokes or have a laugh. It’s not that she’s a miserable shrew, she just doesn’t get it. I think she attempted to be funny the other day but it made no sense and was met by a row of blank expressions.
Her eating habits are awful. She either gaks when she eats (you know, that noise you get when you chew with your mouth open?) or bangs her teeth together. It’s like nails being run down a chalk board and so I have to remove myself from the area when she does it.
There are certain words and sounds she likes to make when talking to people. This is more annoying when she is on the phone as you can only hear her side of the conversation. These words/sounds include: “Riiiiggghht”, “Yeah”, “Wooooow”, “Uh oh” and “Absolutely” and will be repeated countless times.
Lastly (I’m sure this list will grow as the months wear on) she is obsessed by her commute into work. She lives in the sticks by all accounts and by that I mean her closest train station is a car journey away. It’s a long journey, she drives in and to date has been having problems getting in on time. Every morning I am subjected to more information about her journey and how awful it is and how she has to get up at 5am. Fine, fair enough, no one enjoys a long commute but surely she was aware of this when she took the job? It’s starting to grate on a lot of people, especially those who also get up at 5am and trek in here, have been doing for several years and who don’t make a fuss of it on a daily basis. She will talk to anyone about it, our department, the lawyers, anyone she picks the phone up to. Yesterday she had the Occupational Health lady in to assess her work station:
OH Lady: So how tall are you?
CJ: Oh, uh huh, er, um….I am 161cm tall
OH Lady: Can you reach your stapler?
CJ: I don’t have one
(this kind of questioning goes on a while and I zone out and when I zone back in again…)
OH Lady: Is there anything else you want to discuss with me other than your commute……
(I choke on my coffee and try to hold back the laughter)
Then they spent the next 20 minutes taking about train stations.
She talks to herself continuously. About anything, not just that under your breath swearing you might do occasionally or reading something out loud, I mean anything. It’s like her mouth is telling us about everything going on in her brain “riiiight, so who’s this email from then…?” or “I’ll get a cup of tea before I start that…” And it’s just loud enough for me to hear it all. I even caught her doing it in the toilets this morning.
She takes her handbag with her everywhere. To meetings, to the toilet, even to make a coffee. We’re not sure what she has in there, maybe the crown jewels? I’m tempted to swap it with a replica for the afternoon and find out.
She has no sense of humour. OK, so some of us here can be a little crude at times but she just doesn’t seem to get jokes or have a laugh. It’s not that she’s a miserable shrew, she just doesn’t get it. I think she attempted to be funny the other day but it made no sense and was met by a row of blank expressions.
Her eating habits are awful. She either gaks when she eats (you know, that noise you get when you chew with your mouth open?) or bangs her teeth together. It’s like nails being run down a chalk board and so I have to remove myself from the area when she does it.
There are certain words and sounds she likes to make when talking to people. This is more annoying when she is on the phone as you can only hear her side of the conversation. These words/sounds include: “Riiiiggghht”, “Yeah”, “Wooooow”, “Uh oh” and “Absolutely” and will be repeated countless times.
Lastly (I’m sure this list will grow as the months wear on) she is obsessed by her commute into work. She lives in the sticks by all accounts and by that I mean her closest train station is a car journey away. It’s a long journey, she drives in and to date has been having problems getting in on time. Every morning I am subjected to more information about her journey and how awful it is and how she has to get up at 5am. Fine, fair enough, no one enjoys a long commute but surely she was aware of this when she took the job? It’s starting to grate on a lot of people, especially those who also get up at 5am and trek in here, have been doing for several years and who don’t make a fuss of it on a daily basis. She will talk to anyone about it, our department, the lawyers, anyone she picks the phone up to. Yesterday she had the Occupational Health lady in to assess her work station:
OH Lady: So how tall are you?
CJ: Oh, uh huh, er, um….I am 161cm tall
OH Lady: Can you reach your stapler?
CJ: I don’t have one
(this kind of questioning goes on a while and I zone out and when I zone back in again…)
OH Lady: Is there anything else you want to discuss with me other than your commute……
(I choke on my coffee and try to hold back the laughter)
Then they spent the next 20 minutes taking about train stations.
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