Misanthropy at Work
The older I get, being thirty-hmhmhmhm at the moment, the less I find myself able or willing to expend my very limited pool of patience on other grown-ass adults who don't know how to behave in public.
This is usually not a problem.
If someone is blasting through their Tiktok feed with the volume turned all the way up in a public place, I can simply leave. If a person is not using their inside voice in the library, I can go to a different room. If someone is throwing an adult tantrum at the grocery store, I can skip that aisle and come back later. If someone is having an intimate and detailed medical discussion on speaker phone in the break room at work, I can get up and eat my lunch in the locker room. My ADHD related auditory sensitivity is by a large my own fucking problem, and I deal with it accordingly.
But when I am at my desk at work, trying to do my job, and my semi-open office is suddenly full of adults who have never once in their lives been instructed on what an inside voice sounds like, who all have things that are so important to say that they can't possibly wait for anyone else to finish talking...
I am working. I have shit I need to do. And four different people are standing less than a foot apart, shouting to be heard over each other because they are all having different non-confrontational conversations at a volume typically reserved for football stadiums or temper tantrums. My expensive noise-cancelling headphones are on and active, the volume is up so high that I'm risking permanent hearing damage, and I can still hear every single word as if it's being hollered directly against my ear drum.
And then two more people enter and also start yelling to be heard over other conversations that are already happening.
I can't go anywhere. I am working. I am figuratively chained to my desk. I take breaks, but when I return they're still there, and I can't spend more than half my day pacing the breakroom waiting for them to be done shouting about their MTG decks or what their roommate heard about the guy down the street or how Karen is making her hot flashes everyone else's problem.
My rope is fraying quickly. I'm gonna lose it any day now. We don't have the space at my work for them to create a "quiet room," which is the only accommodation I can think of that could reasonably be offered. I feel like "everyone shut the fuck up at all times always forever" will not be received as a reasonable suggestion by HR--sorry, "pEoPlE sErViCeS." And my job is not one they will allow me to do from home, even though I could.
I think a lot about this issue of mine. Am I just a simple introvert? No, people from certain corners of the internet declare, there's no such thing, you're simply an anti-social misanthrope who hates people. But I love people. I enjoy conversations with like-minded folk. I like meeting new people and sharing interests. But the tank that contains my allotted "people energy" is very small, and when it has drained, I begin to experience physically agonizing headaches and I need a quiet place to retreat to so I can recharge. I could chalk it up to a simple side effect of being on the AUD/ADHD spectrum or attribute it to my own failures with reference to social norms and behavior.
But sometimes I really do truly think that if people just learned to keep their fucking voices down, a lot of us would go home with less headaches at the end of the day.
Also please for the love of god do not discuss your father's colon blockages in the lunch room at work during lunch around other people on speaker phone.
Why does this need to be said.
What is wrong with this world.
Any insane work woes you feel like sharing?
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