>Earlier today, I was sitting at the reception desk, trying to type up a letter which had been dictated into a tape. In complete silence, the tape is already difficult to transcribe because words get cut off when my boss starts talking before he starts up the recorder. Add to that his usual mumbling and jumbling of word and phrases…it takes all of my concentration (and intuition) just to figure out where one sentence ends and another begins.

During this torture session, two guys have spontaneously burst into conversation RIGHT next to my desk. They are not using their indoor voices either. These are sales guys who speak loudly no matter what they do. Think of that Will Ferrel character, Jacob Silg with the Voice Immoderation Syndrome or whatever it is.

I’m sitting there trying to focus on the babble in the headphones while these two carry on a conversation about some damn “restaurant by the lake”. I blast the volume, further obscuring the words when the copier guy who had been fixing that damn machine turns on his vacuum cleaner! My nerves were totally on edge from all this racket as well as having the Creepy Guy lurking around the reception area. I went into my office and locked the door. Strangely enough, no one bothered me for a whole 30 minutes.