Judgements 3/25/2004
There’s a woman who sits across the cube wall from me. She is always talking. She always sounds irritable. She is always bitching. She bitches on the phone to her friends about her husband, she bitches on the phone to her husband about her bank, she bitches to her friends at work about her friends outside work, her husband, her shoes, the contractors, the weather.
She is a very large, unattractive woman with a very large, unattractive voice. Her brain has grown so accustomed to complaining that her voice is kept perpetually in a negative, nasal, whiny gear. Even when she’s not complaining, she sounds like she is. “Where is my pen?” “Have you seen Chuck?” “Is lunch ready yet?” Even innocuous comments are delivered sounding like bitter laments. The sound of her voice stuck in complain is not unlike how I imagine my car would sound if I drove it everywhere in second gear.
One day I heard her on the phone trying to make an appointment for Parent-Teacher meetings at her son’s school. I assume she was on the phone with the school secretary. Her conversation went something like this:
“No, it’s fine with us, whenever his teacher has time is good for us, his father will be going to the meeting.”
[pause as she listens to the person on the other end of the line speak]
“No, his father will go to the meeting, I won’t be able to attend.”
[another pause]
“No, really, no time is inconvenient for us. Whenever she’s free is fine.”
[pause]
“WELL I DON’T SEE HOW HE COULD POSSIBLY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE TIME, SEEING AS HE HAS NO JOB AND DOESN’T DO A DAMNED THING ALL DAY LONG.”
[pause]
“Ok, thank you. You have a nice day too.”
She has possibly the largest ass I’ve ever seen and she’s constantly eating. She eats jumbo-sized portions of free lunch, free ice cream, miscellaneous office cake. Some days I wonder how she can cram that monolithic ass into her Herman Miller. This large, loud, whining woman would be very easy to dislike.
However, some days I hear her on the phone to her son. Listening to these phone calls, I hear all the cheer and positivity she’s been hoarding all day being concentrated and poured into the phone to this little boy. Her voice softens in a way you wouldn’t think possible, and she sounds, at last, like a very kind, warm person. A person that I like a great deal.
It’s a strange friendship I have with this woman to whom I never speak at all, but whose every phone call I hear. Cube walls are so flimsy. She’s so loud and unpleasant and I spend a lot of time wishing she’d shut up, but I’m also fond of her in my own way. I am fond of her for the short glimpses of softness she shows to her small child and for being a constant reminder of how pointless it is to assume we know enough about anyone in our office environments to accurately judge their worths as humans.