Down To My Last Nerve

At my place of employment we don't have cubicles. Instead, in order to facilitate communication, we sit in fairly open rows.

I'll admit that this does work pretty well in promoting teamwork. You see, it's a lot easier to collaborate with somebody when you can just slide your chair up to their desk and interrupt whatever they're doing and pester them until they help you, just so you will go away.

(Also, it makes things more entertaining, as you can now engage in such activities at trying to shoot a rubber band into the water cup of the person sitting a few desks down. This is one of my favorite work activities.)

However, there is a downside to being close to others. That is the fact that people are annoying, and I hate them. Take, for example, the Pen-Clicker. This is a person who has a nervous habit of clicking their pen all day long in an attempt to drive me insane. I have known a few Pen-Clickers and none of them realize that making the same annoying noise for 8 hours straight may not be appreciated by everybody around them.

To make matters worse, Pen-Clickers have a few close relatives, such as the Pen-Tappers-On-The-Desk, The-Marker-Cap-On-And-Off-Snappers, and the Incessant-And-Very-Loud-Hummers. Don't even get me started on the Fingernail-Clippers.

The only way to combat this, besides throwing the offending party through a window, which would probably hurt you on your annual performance review, is to listen to music on your headphones at the highest possible volume, just to drown everybody out. Of course, that negates the whole idea of the open workspace and team collaboration, but what's a guy to do?

Wait! I just had a great idea. You know the slogan, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"?  I think that's what I'm going to do. There's always room for another All-Day-Long-Coffee-Slurper.