Doors please!

Dear people who work around me,

Please shut your office doors. They are there for a reason. I've written up a handy guide to some typical reasons to help you identify one or more reasons why this applies to you:

1) you have an unbelievably annoying voice. It's croaky and nasally and loud and because you end each sentence with a little uptick in tones it sounds like you're about 20 but I know you're not and you talk on the phone all friggin day and I can hear every single petty little gravelly whinging snatch of conversation that comes out of your surrealistially annoying mouth. Geez! It's like trying to work with a flock of mosquitos around my head!

2) you're on a telecon, for Pete's sake, with the speaker phone turned up to 11 and you think that shouting back will make your point more salient. Makes me want to walk by your (open) office door and pretend to be a Tourette's patient.

3) you use the phone to conduct endless personal business and you talk to multiple car dealers or people who have tires or service people before deciding on one of them to do whatever it is that you want them to do, and after every single call you talk to your husband to keep him updated with the news and the passive-aggressive tag line "well you wanted to know what I was finding out" smattered generously throughout your time with him. Get over yourself, decide on a course of action, and grow a spine already! You don't get PAID to do this!

4) You talk loudly and laugh even louder - loudly enough that I've come THIS CLOSE to having a heart attack when you bray suddenly and with an astonishingly earsplitting harsh timbre. I'm sure you're a lovely person, and live right out LOUD like we're all told to, but man, you need to ratchet back a notch or 6 before I code!

5) you curse and are abusive on the phone to either your a) coworkers or b) clients. You have a brash new york accent that, sadly, reminds me of my Dad, and every time I hear you cussing up a blue streak and telling people they're idiots I'm reminded of him, though he would never have talked that way. You're rude and unfunny on the phone, and bizarrely nice in person. Do the same on the phone, won't you? More flies caught with honey and all that.

6) your phone's ringtone is going to make me smash it into bits if you keep leaving it on your desk when you're not there. I cannot stand to hear "Let it Be" one.more.time.

7) your lunch stinks. What on EARTH are you eating? It smells like vomit.


People - If you have a door to your office, then you have a status symbol signifying your position of responsibility and are, I'm assuming, a professional. Use the door, the door is your friend, embrace the concept of the door as you go about your daily business! You know, folks - "Open door policy" does NOT mean you can't close it! It's just a phrase! Really!

You see those people in the cubicles over there? They would KILL to have your door, and a workstation that doesn't afford every single person walks past their cube on the way to the bathroom or the coffee pot a look at what they're doing- if they had a door they would CLOSE IT and revel in the privacy and SPACE and QUIET that your door and honking big office affords.

Remember the little people, won't you, and use the door. If you did, maybe I wouldn't have to 8 of the 9 hours I'm here every day.

Love,
Tiff