The Angry Bald Man Vs. The Dog Lady
In addition to running my presidential campaign and serving as an advocate for endangered ferrets, I also hold a highly important full-time position in government service. It’s highly important to me, anyway, because I’m rather fond of eating and having a roof over my head.
Like many of you, I perform my job in a cubicle farm. Life there isn’t absolutely horrible, and it certainly beats working 16 hours a day in China sewing buttons on polyester pants for Wal-Mart shoppers. But cube life certainly has its drawbacks—mainly, having other humans in close proximity. For the most part, I get along well with my coworkers, but there’s one person who sits near me whose mere presence makes my already high blood pressure rise even higher. For the sake of her anonymity, I will call her “the Dog Lady,” because writing “The Most Annoying Person on the Face of the Planet” takes too long.
The Dog Lady is a 50-ish woman whom, as you might guess, loves dogs. She has a Chihuahua named Helmut, about which she’ll talk endlessly to anyone who’s willing (or not) to listen. The Dog Lady also loves to knit, and she knits sweaters for Helmut and discusses said sweaters and their creation at length with female coworkers. Helmut can be seen sporting these sweaters, along with various Halloween costumes, on the Dog Lady’s computer screensaver. Helmut does not look happy in these outfits, but I may be misreading the expression on his hideous little bug-eyed face. But obsessive Chihuahua-love is not what’s annoying about the Dog Lady. It’s primarily her voice, which has such a whiny quality that a “good morning” from her sounds like a complaint. And she is loud. Very, very loud.
In Greek mythology, Stentor was a herald whose voice, according to the poet Homer, was “as powerful as the voices of 50 other men.” I’m certain the Dog Lady is one of Stentor’s direct descendants. Anyone within a 200-foot radius can hear every word she speaks. Because of this, I know more about the Dog Lady than I care to. When I first met her, I assumed she had a young child at home, because every morning I would hear her on the phone with this presumed tyke, saying, “Are you up? You’re not out of bed yet!? Get out of bed now and make your lunch, or else you’re going to miss the bus!” Or “Did you do your homework? You haven’t started that paper yet? Isn’t it due in a couple of days?! Stop playing video games and get to work on that—now!!”
I later learned this person is her husband, who apparently quit work to go back to college full-time. I don’t know what he’s studying, but he needs to enroll in “Manhood 101.” I haven't inquired whether he goes to a "special" college on a "special" bus, but I presume not. He looks fairly normal in the one picture I've seen of him, which rotates through the Dog Lady's screen saver between the dozens of photos of the costumed Helmut. Usually after bitching her man-child out, she’ll end her phone call by saying “I love you”—which, from her lips, sounds like a threat.
The Dog Lady also talks to herself and the inanimate objects in her cubicle—including her computer, which frequently gets a good cursing for being stupid. She suffers from what might politely be called “verbosity,” or less charitably, “diarrhea of the mouth.” She’ll never use 10 words when a thousand are at her disposal. While a normal person might say, “I have to finish this big report by tomorrow,” the Dog Lady will launch into a half-hour diatribe about the history of the report, why she has to do it, and why it is stupid. She assumes that her job, which is actually less appealing to me than sewing buttons on Wal-Mart pants in China, is as fascinating to others as it is to her. She is mistaken. I thought that my glassy stare and uninterested grunts would be sufficient cues that I didn’t want to be subjected to her soliloquies, but no. Until I started being rude and turning my back and ignoring her, she would complain to me about work she had to do that she didn’t had time for—perhaps because she’s usually too busy knitting yet another cardigan for little Helmut. Helmut must have a closet bigger than my bedroom.
The Dog Lady also has allergies, which is another favorite topic of complaint. She makes a variety of loud noises moving the phlegm around her bodily cavities. I will attempt to translate these sounds into English: “Hawk-uh-uhh-uh-OOMMMM!!” “Snnnnxxxxxxzzzz-uh-umm!” “Skuh-huh-huh-HUH-huh-huh-huh!” You get the idea. Sometimes she makes these noises approximately every 15 seconds, all day long. I realize that allergies can be serious for some people, but so is inciting a coworker to kill you because you are the most incredibly annoying person on Earth.
I’m sure I have my own annoying habits—although I certainly can’t think of any at the moment—but I do know that being a noise polluter is not one of them. I’m known for my economy of words—saying only what’s needed, while always being witty and urbane. (At least, that’s what I pay hookers to tell me.) And I make an effort to consider the Dog Lady’s good points. For instance, I know she’s basically a good-hearted person, because she takes Helmut to hospitals and nursing homes for “companion visits” to bite and pee on the elderly and helpless. Apparently they enjoy this. As, no doubt, does Helmut. But really, this bit of compassion doesn’t make her less annoying. If I were in the hospital and she and Helmut came to visit, I’d immediately call Dr. Jack Kevorkian for some quick euthanasia.
Unfortunately, one can’t pick one’s relatives or coworkers, so until the day that I become president of this great land or stab my eardrums with an ice pick or mentally snap and strangle the Dog Lady to death, I will have to endure the noise she makes.
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