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miss_lucy21I am sitting in my cube at work, concentrating on something when one of my coworkers come up behind me without saying anything and pats me on the shoulder to get my attention. When I jump a mile, she says "I was trying to not startle you!".
Um.
Yeah, that's not going to work. Look, people, you're going to startle me. It's not your fault- I'm just jumpy and high strung on a good day and when I start really working on something, I hyperfocus, mostly because a number of people on my team are really freaking loud. All the time. So I really don't know you're coming at me. I don't care that you startled me, because I know that it's going to happen, probably multiple times a day, no matter how careful everyone is to try to not startle me. I do care that you thought coming up behind me and touching me without warning was less likely to startle me than doing what everyone else does, which is to say something before you come into my cube and/or knocking on the top of my cube (our cubes are half walls. They're about chest high on me). Because, really?
Um.
Yeah, that's not going to work. Look, people, you're going to startle me. It's not your fault- I'm just jumpy and high strung on a good day and when I start really working on something, I hyperfocus, mostly because a number of people on my team are really freaking loud. All the time. So I really don't know you're coming at me. I don't care that you startled me, because I know that it's going to happen, probably multiple times a day, no matter how careful everyone is to try to not startle me. I do care that you thought coming up behind me and touching me without warning was less likely to startle me than doing what everyone else does, which is to say something before you come into my cube and/or knocking on the top of my cube (our cubes are half walls. They're about chest high on me). Because, really?
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Date: 2014-08-20 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-21 12:06 am (UTC)At least we have half cubes, which does cut down on my being startled- if I'm looking up, I can often see someone coming because I'm on the end. I could configure the desk so I wasn't sitting with my back to the entrance, but then my back would be to my team and I'd still be getting startled by them yelling at me from behind to get my attention. I do have most of them trained to say my name and wait for a response or for me to look directly at them before assuming I'm listening to them- my boss had many whole one sided conversations with me because she thought I was listening before she figured out that if I don't respond, I probably have no idea she's talking to me.