I had noticed it before, but it was never as long and disturbing as yesterday morning… the loud talker sitting next to me was on a role. She was out there. At Olympic level. She was doing some teaching through the telephone thing and talking so loud… You wouldn’t believe it!

Funny enough I had told Bastiaan about her a couple of days earlier and I had promised him that I would call him when she was on the phone again, so he could be the judge about the volume. So I did, and his reaction left no room for discussion. He was stunned! :-)

I don’t mind it so much if people are on the phone around me. I usually can just block out the noise, hear it’s there, but don’t listen and just ignore it as noise in the background. But not with her… Her volume is so loud, it’s impossible to block it out. And even if you succeed, it’s takes to much energy to do so.

After she had been on the phone for more then an hour, it finally stopped… relief… Then she thanked me for getting her a cup of coffee when she was on the phone. I couldn’t accept… I was blunt and went straight to the point. “Sorry, don’t get me wrong, I only went to get coffee because I couldn’t concentrate on my work with you talking so loud.” Her excuse was simple: “Yes, the headset is so good, it’s blocking most of the sound so I can’t hear myself and therefore have to speak very loud.” …

Weird… because when she was on the phone I asked my other colleagues about the loud volume, they said it was normal. Even borrowed a similar headset while she was on the phone, put it on, but it didn’t block a thing for me! Strange…

Today, when the noise was back, I used the headset from my phone to listen to the radio while she was on the phone. What pleasure! This weekend I will look up my old Formula 1 earplugs, to make good use of them again next week! Grandprix or not! :-)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 19:03 and is filed under Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.