Variation on a Theme: Loud Mouth V

Mr. Eleven

The person who fought the most with Hacky was someone who was about 135 degrees away from her, should you have drawn a circle around me. His name is Mr. Eleven because he only had one volume level.

I would have loved to hear Mr. Eleven sing. He had a very rich baritone/bass voice that carried quite well. I think—considering that he wasn't tone deaf— that he would have probably been a pretty desirable singer. His voice had great resonance, and I am pretty sure he could get some of those low notes with power.

The problem was the fact that his primary responsibility was to offer phone assistance to corporate customers. This meant that he was on the phone for most of the day. When I first moved into my location, I found myself standing up and trying to discreetly locate him by his voice. I thought that he was standing over the wall from my cube where the community printers were located to pick up a print job while talking on the phone. When I would stand up, there wouldn't be anyone there.

I finally caught his lips moving one day while I was coming back from a leisurely lunchtime walk. I was amazed to find that he was across the aisle from me, as well as three cubes in. This means that his voice was generally carrying out of the top of his cube, over two other (very patient) people, past the twelve-foot aisle, and over my cube wall.

Yeah, Mr. Eleven is right.

He didn't bother me after a while. I just got so that I could drown out his raspy voice. It became kind of cathartic at times when I was on a call that was completely dis-interesting, or when something was being explained for the fourth time (because at least one person who should have been listening the first two times didn't start listening until the third time, and then proceeded to ask questions that were asked the first time, leaving the presenter no choice but to think that the rest of us on the call were completely lost).