straight to the brain
There is a guy on our floor who whistles. Compulsively. Constantly. Tunelessly. He's a really nice guy...I guess he doesn't even realize he is doing it most of the time. I've mentioned the open floor plan at work, right? And sadly, the pitch of his whistling rips right through headphones and straight into your cerebral cortex. There is no ignoring it, try as you may.
I finally had to be a total meanie and ask if he could please stop...I felt so awkward, but then afterwards, I got three emails from other floor denizens thanking me. :^)
2 comments:
I use a Palm Pilot and used to have the little alarm go off about 10 minutes before my next meeting. Then I'd hit the snooze button and get the alarm again 5 minutes later. Despite having set a brief and, I thought, pleasingly non-intrusive sound (Picard's communicator) it seemed to bug someone else.
He sent me a brief little email simply saying having my alarm go of so often in meetings was bothersome. Basically just one sentence letting me know. Didn't even ask me to stop, just letting me know. He was polite, straightforward, non-judgmental. And, largely because he was just so matter-of-fact is his request I had no problem with it being brought to my attention.
Drop the volume way down, change to an even softer tone, never use snooze. No problem.
I figure as long as a request isn't accompanied with criticism, anyone who objects to having their innocently bothersome behavior pointed out is probably an ass anyway.
I like that. And I definitely tried to be polite about asking the guy to stop whistling...he wasn't intending to be disruptive, and he honestly didn't realize that he was doing it quite so much.
I hope he took it as gracefully as you did...
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