God Bless the I-pod

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.