one loud bastard

I live in Room 302 of my building. The friendly Irish neighbor who lives directly beneath me, in 202, told me with regret that he's been kept awake by the scraping of my desk's chair—this after I had put little "chair socks" on the chair to dampen or prevent just that sort of scraping noise. Apparently, he's a very light sleeper, as he himself admits. I've made an effort, since then, to slide my chair back and forward as silently as possible.

Just today, I and Colleague 2 were scolded by disgruntled Colleague 3, who came into our office and groused that he "could hear every word" we were saying while he, Colleague 3, was in the classroom next door. Since Colleague 2 and I had been gleefully discussing something rather vulgar, I felt a bit guilty. The classrooms on that side of the building are flanked by two parallel hallways: one a large main corridor and the other a narrow accessway. The classrooms have windows on one side of them, but instead of opening directly to the outdoors, they give onto the accessway. Our faculty office also has windows that open into the same accessway, so if both the classroom and office windows are open, any conversation will get piped into the next room. That's what happened today.

So I'm not having much luck staying silently out of my colleagues' way, it seems. I imagine I'll have to walk on eggshells from now on.


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