Silence is Golden!!

[natalie_ca]

I enjoy my solitude. I also enjoy  being around people for short periods of time. However, after a long, very busy day with several dozen phone calls (60!!!), the only thing I want to do when I leave work is to just be alone and have peace and quiet!

Usually the ride home is ok, and other passengers in the car just keep to themselves or read a book.  But today!!! OMG!

There was a woman with a companion helper in the van with me.  The woman would not stop talking!!  If the driver said something to her she would respond and then say "You know what Taya? The driver asked me .......and I told him ........" and then she would go on and repeat the full conversation as if we hadn't heard it for ourselves.  As soon as there was a second of silence she would start up with "Can I ask you something......" to her companion.

Drove me freaking crazy!!!  Why is it that some people just can't sit in silence and have a need to fill every waking minute with chatter?!

Now that I'm home, I'm relishing my peace and quiet! 

 

[thelifeofzeus]

I know exactly what you mean. People feel the need to hear themselves, cause I can guarantee you 90% of the time it's useless jargle.

To be quite frank I can only stand to listen to my family and even then..

Solitude and silence please!

ps: sorry you had to endure that, bleh!

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Fun!  I used to be like that after work.  And there are times now that I have to send my DD to her room for quiet play time because she doesn't nap and she will just stand here and talk endlessly.  And ask the same question 3 different ways.  I do love my conversations with her and seeing how she is growing on the inside; but wow...It gets overwhelming and I need a little break.  It becomes hard to even form responses; when she lets me get a word in edgewise!

I do get lonely if I'm alone TOO much; but yeah I need the quiet to decompress!  Thank the Lord; He gave me a husband who matches me in that respect!

One of my closest friends for years and years was a talker.  She even talked in her sleep.  A lot!  She would fall asleep mid conversation and just keep talking.  You wouldn't know till her responses stopped making sense!  Her husband is a talker; I wonder how he deals sleeping next to a perpetual chatterbox. lol

 

[natalie_ca]

It's a good thing I have impulse control, otherwise I would have told her to shut-up!  lol

I tried to read to block her out, but she had one of those obnoxious sounding voices that just pierced through everything.   I think I'm going to start carrying ear plugs with me.

 

[Winchester]

I hear you. One of the departments in our building is frustrating and annoying.....to the point where it's gotten ridiculous. There's a guy who belly-laughs over every little thing. He laughs and smacks the desk with each guffaw. You'd swear he was having a heart attack because he has to stop and get his breath. And it's over nothing. The other day, I got a phone call and I couldn't hear over all the noise across the hallway. I kept asking the caller to please speak louder. He couldn't hear me over the noise! He kept saying that this is how we spend his tax dollars, by having a party. And I kept telling him that it wasn't our dept! It's like this every single day. Utter chaos, starting at 7:30 in the morning. During the government shutdown, this guy couldn't work....and honestly, we were thanking god for the shutdown because it was blissfully quiet in here. Shutdown ended and it's back to normal. He's going to retire in January and we can't wait for him to get out of here.

The other day I was walking back the hallway to the kitchen. He was coming out with another employee. All of a sudden, he started to laugh, stopped and started smacking the wall! The other guy's eyes got big, he looked at me and shook his head. Personally, I think he's a few whiskers short of a full set.

And there's nothing we can do. The acoustics in the building are really bad and everything just floats around. We talked to the PTB (Powers That Be) and they don't care. One of the secretaries in here wears 6-inch heels and she loves to hear herself click-click down the hallway. Somebody (not me) asked the PTB for some kind of a runner down the hallway to try to keep the noise down, but that was turned down, too. She even bragged to my co-worker one morning that she bought a new pair of shoes that make even more noise. So she knows it's annoying, but she doesn't care. There are people here who don't even begin to understand the meaning of the word "professional".

And then there's the public. We have a lot of meetings in the building here; it's a county government building, so it's to be expected. But honestly, the public doesn't realize that this is also a place where people are trying to work. Many of us don't have offices; we work in cubes. Some have little windows, but I took my window out, simply because I got tired of the public gawking through the window at me....they would actually stop and stare. People will walk down the hallway and open our cube doors. They'll say, "Oh this is a nice office!" or "I wouldn't want to work in this one." And we're in here! Trying to work! Clueless! People are clueless!

Is it any wonder that most days I come home from work and just want quiet? Just 15 minutes of pure quiet? No talking, no nothing. Leave me completely alone for 15 minutes. That's all I ask.

 

[swampwitch]

I always feel a little sorry for people like that, when I run into them in public. Sometimes they are just really lonely, and probably live alone and have no one to talk to unless they are out. One time when our daughter was a baby, we had just moved to a new city where we didn't know anyone, and my husband was gone for a month for his work. I found myself to be one of those lonely talkative people, trying to strike up a conversation with the person bagging my groceries. 

 

Since then, I'm really nice to the lonely people. Usually it is older ladies, for some reason, if they start talking I'll always engage in conversation with them. They are usually super-nice once you start giving them even a tiny bit of attention.

Of course there are obnoxious people, too, who just like to hear themselves speak! Those people are annoying as anything.

 

[Draco]

Sounds like how my coworker used to be. She'd chatter all day long, either to herself or to anyone who may be listening. she'd constantly be on her phone all day too. She's gotten MUCH better though after we talked it over. She'd still talk, but majority of the time, it's nice and quiet at work.