My neighbor talks very loud. We don't have high cubicle walls so we can hear whatever our neighbors are talking about, if they're loud enough. Now, if it was about client related matters, I wouldn't care. Cause it's work. But he's always mackin on some girl (and he has terrible game), talking to his landlord, yelling at his ex-wife, talking to his fitness instructor, etc etc etc. The dude was cool before he moved over. His morning calls kinda bugged me then but now that he's on the way out (we had a small layoff and he was affected), he has LESS work, and does MORE calling. So I overheard him and I know for a fact he clearly doesn't give a sht about work, or being here. But that still doesn't mean he should be disrupting my work. How do I tell this guy to STFU, without being too insensitive about his eliminated position?
Just walk over there and be like, hey man, can you please keep it down? And if he acts all stupid then just tell him you're going to be on a fairly important call and you don't want the other person hearing him talk to his ex-wife, landlord, or fitness instructor. If that doesn't work. Rat him out to his manager. Throw him under the bus. Get his ass booted early.
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Wow, what a coincidence. I just helped a guy move his desk into the office next to mine. First thing he did when he sat down was get on the phone. He was very, very loud, but I've been told that I am too. He was talking about work though, which is better than his baby's mama or whatever. He works for our trust company and has worked for the Supreme Court or something. I bet officing next to him has more benefits than downfalls.
EDIT: ^ that will just be poisoning the well... Listen to meggoleggo. I believe she has much experience with this. If it were me, I'd turn it into a "how did THAT feel?" situation. If my neighbor were chewing loud with his mouth open, slurping on a mango or sucking the living daylights out of chicken bones, I'd bring the same dish the next day and do it LOUDER than him... and when he would complain... I'd say: "How does THAT feel ?" ... but I wouldn't advice for you to do that... yeah, just nicely say something first... "Can you please turn your speaking volume down a bit...?" And that's all you need. If he says something to the person on the other end of the phone about you like: "Oh, that's just my coworker being an a-hole", then by all means, bring your boss in just to sit there for a while while he's on the phone. Just tell your boss: "Can you be in my office in 10 seconds?" without your coworker knowing, and see if he turns his volume down. If he continues to do it, then rat him out. If he blows three chances to correct his behavior, he's out. More than likely he will come to you and say: "Ok, I'll bring the volume down... sorry, man."
Say something non-confrontational but not so sugar-coated that he'll just blow it off, like "(Name of guy), I was wondering if you could be more discrete when making your personal phone calls. They really disrupt me when I'm working." If that doesn't work, get to work early tomorrow and sprinkle anthrax on his receiver.
Take notes about what he's talking about for a couple weeks, then send an organization wide newsletter email about everything that's going on in his life.
Haha I was going to make a hoax newsletter and mass email it to the whole floor. Sending it corporate wide would've resulted in over 200 "Please take me off this distribution list" Yeah, totally blowing up in my face. DID think about this though.
Someone posted a site last week where you could send anonymous emails and texts. You could have some fun with that. Another option is to prank call the dude from an outside line. The caller ID just shows our generic number. Just call and hang up all day long. I do this one all the time when I'm bored. One time, I had this guy so frustrated that he was calling the main switchboard and complaining. He even complained to me. Good times.
July 15th....Bah, he shutup for now. But I know he's gonna go back to yapping on his blackberry in another 20 minutes.
I use to have a loud office mate... Oh hey swoly..didn't see you in the thread... neverminds. Actually, i'd welcome a loud office mate right about now. Then again i'm bored to tears about 95% of my workday.
Well, the FCC ruled I couldn't run the phone sex operator line from there as I was stealin' company time and resources, or some bewwwwwwwwllllllllllschietttt... ... so... you lost out, mah frien'!
This. Just ride it out until his last day. If you got laid off, but still had to come to work, I doubt you would be working that hard yourself. I have a loud co-worker who is 2 cubes down. I can still hear every word of his phone conversations, his coughing, his hand rubbing, etc. He is a VERY annoying dude. I swear he was home schooled becaus he has no social skills at all. I just put on my headphones. Half the time I have nothing playing, but atleast I can ignore him if he comes to my cube to try to talk to me.
