Cubicle, Oh Cubicle

I work in a cubicle farm. Lots of workers pounding away at their keyboards, efficiently working like little wind up toys. Or so the theory goes.

I sit next to the loudest woman in the world. This LWITW talks on the phone like she is yelling across the room, even when it is a normal conversation and she is actually not trying to yell at the person (although she does actually yell at people quite often). It's pretty hard to concentrate with her yelling and all, but what really takes the cake is her mispronunciation and misuse of words and common phrases. Twice I have heard her tell someone that what they were doing 'would not pass the mustard'. I am fairly certain she meant 'would not pass muster'...but now I have started saying it because I secretly make fun of it in my head so much. Someone told LWITW a joke a few weeks ago that included the phrase 'y'all', but she misunderstood and thought that they had said 'mule' so now she refers to our organization as 'the mule' - thinking it is an insider term that she now has in her vocabulary. I am such an easily influenced person when it comes to pronunciation that I fear for my own words...it's like LWITW is taking them all away from me!

One final gripe...I hate, hate, hate loud chewers/open mouth chewers. And as such, it is my lot in life to be surrounded by them wherever I go...so either a) there are a lot of loud/open mouth chewers or b) I still have really bad karma for that cat I hit 10 years ago and then buried and cried over. It's the only bad thing I have ever done (yeah...right...but it's probably one of the worst, and I still feel bad to this day for it)

Anyway, LWITW not only talks loudly, she also chews with her mouth open, smacking her food around. And she is contantly eating 'squishy' things like oranges and 'crunchy' things like apples and cookies and sucking on suckers. Who sucks on suckers - besides kids, 20 something chicks trying to be sexy, and ex-smokers? LWITW, that's who. It makes my skin crawl, I imagine that on the other side of the partition is a woman sucking the internal organs out of a chipmunk...because that is exactly what it sounds like to me.

I hope you pass the mustard today.