Entry 37: Inconsideration and Annoyance

[The pocket trumpet. My new least-favorite instrument.]

The other day I was going to see a woman in our department to get some reimbursements squared with my trip to New Zealand. She’s at the end of the hall outsider her office, so I ask her if she has a minute, and she says does and to come with her. Just as we’re walking into her office, a guy from the department, who’ve I’ve seen, but don’t know very well, grabs her attention. They exchange a few words, and it turns out that he basically needs the same thing done that I need done. Gradually their conversation progresses, so that instead of just a quick question or two, she’s actually helping him with his stuff, instead of helping me with my stuff, even though I was there first. She sorta realizes this and says, “Oh sorry D, did you have something really important to take care of.”

“Well,” I say, “I wanted to do the same thing as he’s doing.”

“A bit maddening isn’t it?” he asks, and then goes right back to it like he’s not even cognizant of the fact that he completely aced me out.

I just awkwardly stand there for a few moments while they press on, before piping up, “Is this going to take a while? Should I come back?”

“Oh, this type of thing could take all day,” the guy says in a jokey, faux-exasperated way.

“But, I thought we were coming in here to work on my stuff. What happened?” I say to the woman.

“Yes what did happen,” she says to the guy with half a laugh, “You really just pushed your way in, didn’t you? Poor D, he thought he was going to get this done with and be on with his day.”

“I know, I know,” he says also with half a laugh, “Terrible form on my part, terrible form,” and then he goes right back to it without missing a beat.

Luckily, he had to leave a minute later to photocopy something, so I was able to get my stuff squared away without much additional delay (he actually started to come back in the office at one point, but I saw him coming and shifted my weight toward the door to box him out, so that he would have had to physically push me over to get in). Seriously, how inconsiderate is that? He was perfectly willing to cut in front of me and get his stuff taken care of before mine, while I just stood there and watched. And we wanted to do the same thing. It’s not like he just needed something taken care of quickly, while I would be there for hours. (I was actually much faster than him, because I was better organized with my receipts.)

I’m not sure if this guy is an outright asshole or just obliviously, self-centered. I’m leaning toward the latter because it didn’t seem to ever sink in that he was being extremely rude even when it was completely obvious.

He actually reminded me of this woman who was in my office several years ago as a grad student. She wasn’t mean, in fact most of the time she was nice, but she was incredibly inconsiderate. She’d listen to music loudly while others were obviously trying to work, she’d put her stuff all over the office and take up space, things like that. Nobody outright disliked her, but eventually she got under everybody’s skin and nobody could figure out what her deal was. (Interesting side note, she was pretty cute. I say that’s interesting, because we were in an office in a math department.) She would also tell us really inappropriate things about her personal life, things that normal people reserve for their closest confidants or their shrink (or their blog).

Anyway, one day this chick up and disappears. Nobody in the office hears anything from her for about six months until one night she walks in, I happen to be there alone, and she says, “Hello D. How are you? I’ve been diagnosed with a mild case of autism.”

And just like that everything made sense. It was crystal clear. Autism! Of course. Maybe that’s what’s going on with the guy who cut in front of me. Next time I’ll see him I’ll drop a box of toothpicks and see how quickly he counts them.

*****************************************************************************

On a note more of annoyance than of inconsideration, for the two Fridays prior to today there has been a guy standing outside our apartment playing extremely poor renditions of Christmas songs on a pocket trumpet. He literally stands two feet from our front door (it doesn’t look like there is an apartment unit there, which is probably part of the reason he chose that spot in the first place). We have a small unit, so if somebody is making noise outside our door, by, say, blowing a goddamn horn, then there is no escaping it. Imagine we’re in a Winnebago and he’s leaning against the grille. That’s how loudly we hear it. It sucks.

The first week he plays we just let it go and eventually he stops. The next week only I am home (S is out of town on a job for a few weeks), and I let him play for a few hours before eventually asking him (politely) to stop around 10pm. He was nice about it and probably figured I wanted to sleep, but actually I wasn’t tired, I just wanted him to shut the hell up. I was tired of listening to him massacre God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman. To give you an idea of his skill level, he’s about as good as a seventh grader playing lower-middle chair. He’s better than the kids who never practice and lie to the teacher saying they forgot their instruments at home because they’d rather goof off than participate in class (I was one of those kids), but he’s a little worse than your average middle schooler, and he couldn’t touch the top chairs. And I knew I was in for it when I heard him repeating songs. That’s when you know he has no definitive stopping point. That should be a rule for all crappy street musicians, once you run out of songs, that’s it. You’re done. Consider yourself lucky that the public is even allowing you that much.

Anyway, he was back again tonight when I got home from the gym at about 8, and I knew I had to nip this thing in the bud. I can’t let this guy think my doorway is going to become his usual Friday night spot. It would drive me absolutely insane. I had to lay down the law.

“Hey,” I said, “I couldn’t get you to move to a new spot, could I? I live right there and it just comes through, so loudly.”

“I wasn’t planning on playing late tonight.”

“I know, but it’s just that you’re so close to my apartment. Even if it’s not late, you know, I’m trying to watch TV or something and it’s just blaring right through. I mean can’t you go over there [pointing across the street] or over there [pointing down the street], just so you aren’t right next to my door? It seems like you're here each week now..."

"I've been here the last two weeks?"

"Yeah, and look, I know this is a public street and all, so I’m asking you as a favor for me, can you move please?”

“I’ll play for ten more minutes and then move on.”

True to his word, he only played for ten more minutes and much more quietly than before (hopefully I scared him). I could tell that he didn’t really want to stop or move, but it’s hard to say no in that instance. Plus, he’s kind of a meek guy, so when I noticed this I turned on a tiny bit of alpha male. Not enough so that I was a dick, but enough so that his biological instinct would be to not defy me.

It’ll be interesting to see if he’s back next week. I started thinking about what I would do if he just flat out refused to stop playing, and the best I could come up with is to stand out there right next to him and scream the lyrics to all his songs at the top of my lungs in his ear (“O STAR OF WONDER! STAR OF LIGHT! STAR OF ROYAL BEAUTY BRIGHT…”), but hopefully it won’t come to that.