Number 1: This View, Daily

Welcome to Transcriptions of an Irritated Life. I've realized recently that the thing I do best is criticize the world and everyone in it. Show me perfection and I'll find you a flaw.

Number one on my list has been a long time coming. It's this view that I get from my desk, as a look out from my office. Sometimes I can sit and just watch her for what seems like hours. Her name shall, of course, remain anonymous. The back of her head, however, shall remain timeless. Her tightly-wound hair is a perfect introduction to her personality: implacable, sturdy, but mostly inept and seemingly without purpose or appropriate planning.

She handles incoming sales calls and customer service, this hair. But with each phone call, she becomes confused, delirious from even the most mundane of questions. How do I know this? Well, because for every question posed to her, she must put the caller on hold, and ring up her superior via intercom for the answer.


There seem to be a lot of issues with "the system." For every complaint we receive (which is no number to laugh at), "it looks like it never went through the system. Okay, what's the ISBN number?" (Do you know what ISBN even means?) "Sir, it looks like it never got shipped... I don't know why, that's so weird. We don't have it in stock at our warehouse in Massachusetts, but we do have it at our Singapore headquarters. I can have it shipped to my office here in New Jersey, then ship it to you myself. It should take about a month." The conversation sounds rather harmless, but once you hear it repeated fifteen times a day, it becomes like waterboarding. I'll tell you anything, just make it stop!


"Put on some music, David, if you're so annoyed by her," you're saying to your screen right now. Ohh ho ho ho, I can't do that, though. Because, despite her relative lack of utility, talents, or memory, she can't "concentrate" if she can hear the dull tone of talk radio or ambient music. So, I've been reprimanded. And I swear when I was out one time she came in and tried to brake the cord, because now it's got to be plugged in a very specific way if you want both speakers to work.

Also! I hate watching her put on moisturizer. Of course, I'll get to my disdain for all things "moist" someday soon, but with the Hair it's so much more irritating. She snatches the tube (you can see it, the only thing on the shelf above her), squeezes it on like it's spf 45 and she's going to the sun, and complains out loud how "dry it is in here. Isn't it dry?"

The worst, though, is when she makes popcorn in the afternoon. I have innumerable issues with popcorn anywhere outside a movie theater, which my boyfriend can relate to.

I dislike the Hair. It is final.