Office noises

So anyone who has ever had to spend any time in an office has had to put up with aspects of the people they share the room with, sometimes a very small room, it's a given. And by the way, if you haven't been pissed off by someone in your office, you're the one pissing them off.

Now normally I'm pretty easy going and I can deal with just about any kind of noise. Truth be told I prefer a slightly noisy environment, it keeps me from being distracted by random noises. But sometimes there are some noises that just get to be too much. In my current office setting I have to put up with a few of these. Thankfully I can almost replicate the experience for you (no I'm not going to record them and download the recordings onto Napster...that's been done before). I came across a site that searches for sounds. So you can hear comparable sounds to what you would if you spent a day in my office.

• Slurping woman. I'm certain that she doesn't realize that she is doing this, but she will suck air through her lips, making a slurping sound. The joy of this is that it's highly random, possibly once an hour other times I get lucky enough to hear it a few times a minute! So here you, the closest I could get to simulating it (and for the record, she slurped once while I wrote this paragraph. Slurp
  


• Growling man. This one is just fucking odd. It seems to originate from an inside joke with a fellow colleague (female) but it's gone well beyond the funny range. Listening to a grown man growl like a cat as loud as possible is embarrassing for everyone. Growl


• The freak little gremlin. Seriously, this guy is fucking strange. Virtually deaf, which may explain the audible mumbling. About the size of a hobbit, though possibly shrinking. He has plenty of pleasant habits, though my personal favorite is hawking up a nice wet one into the water fountain in the hallway...anyone want a drink of water now? Spit

I haven't posted this list to be mean to anyone, I just needed to vent because frankly it's starting to seriously annoy me and even sicken me a bit. I know that my work environment is filled with socially inept people (nerds) but I'm sure that in any office you could find equally disturbing behaviour...well probably not the gremlin's behaviour, but for sure you could find the rest.

So what is one to do? Crank the volume on the speakers or invest in big headphones that act like ear-muffs? Because frankly I don't want to have to explain to someone more than twice my age why he shouldn't be spitting in the water fountain. I figure if he hasn't figured it out by now, he's not going to.