I. Just. Can't. Take. It.
We have a new competitor in the Annoy Your Co-workers sweepstakes here in my department. A very nice person with a very annoying habit of listening to music at a volume that's not loud enough to complain about, but just loud enough to DRIVE ME INSANE. If I have to hear freaking Dream Weaver one more damned time I don't think I can be responsible for my actions. It's a never-ending stream of Billy Joel and Chicago, Crosby Stills Nash + Young, Beach Boys, The Kingsmen, Lynrd Skynyrd, Rolling Stones, ELO, guitar, flute, piano, bass and drum by every American rock band that's had music on the radio since the 1970s to an extent that I know each and every song without ever having consciously decided I'd actually LIKE to know these songs.

Part of the problem is the construction of our cubicles which seem to carry sound in such a way that a person sitting right next to a radio hears it at a lesser volume than a person one or two cubicles away. Combine that with a few of the voices I'm surrounded by and some days I get very grouchy indeed. Today is probably going to be one of those days.

I can't quite put my finger on when these office sounds started to get on my nerves to this extent, but I think there's something about the particular neighbors I'm surrounded by at the moment that have me utterly nuts in a way I never was before. My husband will tell me it's just me getting old, and hey - he could be right, but I've been annoyed like this at various stages in my life before now - it's just never felt like such a seige on my sanity.

I don't know how much good I've done any of us by complaining like this. But if you hear something on the news about an officeworker going berserk for no apparent reason, you can look back here and know there WAS a reason. That whole music-as-torture thing is looking like a more and more effective way of driving people out of their trees: simple and cheap but undeniably effective.