Don't Stand So Close To Me

One of my favorite things about the TV show Seinfeld was how the characters labeled other people’s quirks, like “low talker”, “high talker” or worse, the dreaded “close talker”. The close talkers invade your personal space. Depending on who this is, it can be unbearable, but as I recently learned, also dangerous!

My co-worker, Goonan, is definitely a close talker, but even worse he’s a hoverer and swear to God, THE most annoying person I have ever met in my life. Somehow, he manages to always be touching me even though his desk is on the opposite side of the room. If he’s not leaning leaning over the back of my chair, he is within 5 inches of my face to ask me how everything is going.

This guy seriously lacks any sort of social boundaries, especially the “please don’t stand stand so close to me” one. I’ve asked him many times to back off and I’m sure I even swore and asked not so nicely one time. He doesn’t care. He just says he’s sorry and comes right back.

I was out of the office the other day and Goonan had aggravated the boss to the point that he almost bounced him out on his butt, so he decided to get brownie points by cleaning the office.

He vacuumed the area around my desk and Lord only knows why, rolled up my heavy-duty-plastic-under-the-office-chair-so-you-can-roll-on-the-carpet thing and stuck it in a corner. However, he forgot to put it back and the next morning, when he unrolled it and put it back, all of the edges were completely turned up.

If I were a Sk8ter Boi, I could have done half-pipes on that thing.

The plastic thing is very heavy and I wasn’t anxious to have a fourth hernia surgery so I asked him to drag it somewhere else. He wouldn’t, so I sat down in my half-pipe and went to work.

Goonan soon hopped up and busied himself by breathing down my neck. He tried to hug me because he thought I was a bit cranky (wonder why?) and I stood up to get away from him. He went for in it anyway, he lost his balance and we both toppled over.
Unless he’s acting as a human shield to gunfire, I really can’t think of any reason at all that I would want Goonan on top of me.

As we fell, my foot hit the very hard curled up beveled edge of the heavy-duty-plastic-under-the-office-chair-so-you-can-roll-on-the-carpet thing and put a huge, bleeding, oozing gash on the top of my foot that doesn’t exactly complement my summer sandal collection.

It doesn’t hurt, it just looks nasty. I’m getting my revenge, though, by not responding to Goonan’s apology e-mails. He hates that :)