I got sumtin' to say, and I need the world to hear it. I'm a lyricologist. I can rap about anything. Shrink, shrink. Blinkity-blink. Tried to make me think. Wanna go to my sink. And vomit. Clean it up wit' Comet. Earth is my planet.
And in quoting one of the worst movies ever, I was hoping to make you as sick to your stomach as I feel, after what happened today.
First, I need to explain how tough it is to get anything done in a large company. I haven't been able to move to my new desk, and the new manager (who henceforth I'll refer to as "homeboy")hasn't been able to move to my old desk. Playing musical chairs, basically. In order to get the move done, because of operating expense cuts, we have to get senior VP approval, which hasn't happened yet. They won't let us move our own items because it is a liability, we might hurt ourselves lifting those laptops. With that said, I moved my items myself anyway, with the exception of my phone, which has to be reprogrammed or routed or whatever they do with phones.
The day I decided to move my computer myself was the day I came into work and homeboy had started moving his own pictures over to the cube I was still in. That annoyed me. But when I came back to my desk after lunch, he had moved a BUNCH of stuff over, and was using my keyboard and mouse.
Now, I'm not a germaphobe, but seeing this guy I hardly know using my stuff, without talking to me, bugged me. Not to mention that I have a bigger monitor than most (something I won years before - and bigger than even my former boss) and an upgraded keyboard and mouse that have cool extra features. Homeboy assumed he would get to keep all that cool stuff as a new manager - so the next morning I took it before he got any crazy ideas.
But, I kept my phone at the old desk. It is a nice wireless deal (since I spend a lot of time on the phone in my job.) The key to this headset, and to the point of the story, is that it has an ear bud - the sound quality is very good. In fact, here is a picture:
Since I do not have a phone set up at my new cube, I told homeboy that I was leaving my phone and would have to come and use it periodically during the day. He agreed.
I received an email from one of my former employees this afternoon. The exchange went like this:
"RS, is that your headset on your old desk still, or homeboys new one?"
"Mine."
"OMG, he has the ear bud in his ear RIGHT NOW! Are you sharing earwax with homeboy? Don't tell him you heard this from me!"
Well, maybe I am a germaphobe, because the idea of sharing an earpiece with homeboy made me sick to my stomach. I haven't even mentioned that he comes across as a pretty unorganized, dirty person. IT WASN'T EVEN AN OVER THE EAR SET UP. IT WAS LITERALLY IN HIS FREAKING EAR.
So, on the one side, the headset came with extra ear buds so you could replace it if they broke. On the other side, are there enough Clorox wipes to make me feel better about it overall? Only time will tell.
Would YOU share ear buds with someone else? Am I overreacting? If ever you wanted to judge me, now is the time.
12 comments:
Hey, I'm with you. I don't even like cleaning (and therefore risk touching) the wax out of our own baby's ear!
Even bigger than the germ thing in my mind is the idea that this has the makings for a big old turf war, and I think you could set this thing off by walking over to your old desk and casually flipping over a photo, and be all "Oh...ha....whoops, I guess!"
AND THEN BRING THE THUNDER!!!!
You have the "biggest monitor" of all, Baby.
I might share an ear bud with Molly. 'Cuz, you know, that whole 'exchange of precious bodily fluids' thing is kinda how we roll. . .
My kids will borrow my ear buds (without asking!), and it drives me a little nuts. But, you know, don't wanna traumatize 'em, or anything, so I usually politely ask 'em not to do that anymore, and they don't. Until the next time they can't find their own freakin' ear buds, and Hey! We can always borrow Dad's!
(*grrrrrr*)
But a co-worker? Ummmmm. . . No thanks. . .
Ooooh! Free ear wax!! Yippee!!
Yeah, that's ick. Take the headset with you man, that's just nuts.
Yuk. I had an employee do that one day, and basically gave her that one, and ordered myself a new one.
Hmmm. Think she planned it that way, so she'd get a (somewhat) newer headset?
He didn't care that it was something another person wore. How did this guy get promoted? By not caring about other peoples feelings too?
Even if you don't use it, I wouldn't let him have it just on general principle.
As a daily head-set wearer, can I just say, GAG. I'm fairly "ok" with such things, and as Desmond said, would be "ok" with my husband sharing ear buds, but not a random coworker. No, that's gross.
Well, I've checked with some of my co-workers, and they agree that this is disgusting behavior as well. They also noted some other gross behavior that homeboy has, so I guess this doesn't come as a surprise to people who know him better than me!
Sweetie - Our baby girl is perfect, therefore she must not get earwax. And you aren't supposed to tell the blog world about my monitor size!
DaKOG - turf war is right. This guy, in terms of turf, is out of control. Little does he know that I am the king of this building, and nothing happens without my knowledge and/or approval.
Des - no problem with Therese, and even possibly the kids. But a stranger? As our son would say: Yucky, Gross!
xi - its too late for the headset. I can't take it now! It's contaminated.
sailor - with cost lock down right now, I can't order another, but I would do the same thing. He can keep it.
TSM - ironically enough, he was not in my top three when we were doing interviews to replace me, but the other managers in the room liked him.
Taja - missed you, sorry! Definitely am with you. Family okay, co-workers gross. Based on the number of people I've seen walk out of the bathroom without washing their hands, I don't trust anyone here.
But that is a different story...
I guess I'm not as grossed out as everyone else about this, but then, I don't regularly share earbuds with random dirty people. We do, however, use headphone monitors when playing guitar/bass at church, and I randomly grab whatever's around. So they get used by a number of people. Now that I think about it, I've even used earbuds that were sitting up there.
I guess I'm just a dirty hippy like Desmond. :-)
Like FTN, fer me this ain't that big a deal. Coming from a semi-farming background, well, I'll kinda let that lead you to your own conclusions of what that might do to one's gross-meter!
In other news, as chief sound guy at church I frequently have people popping up to me with those hearing-assistance devices to tell me "It doesn't work, can you fix it?" usually folllowed by them 'help' by trying to put it in my ear. No, that doesn't excite me much so I keep one of he ear-pieces at the console and use that instead. Unless they're too quick for me.
We do try to keep people using the same unit week to week but, well, these are elderly and aren't always prone to good memory so I replaced all of the in-ear pieces with over-ear pieces and clean 'em regularly with alcohol. But that doesn't fix it all.
Just one more thing to look forward to when you age and the hearing starts to go .... :-)
Post a Comment