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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think constant muttering is a bit off in an office?

57 replies

ShaynePunim · 24/04/2015 13:58

My brand new colleague (started a week ago) mutters, sighs and speaks to herself the whole day long. She sits right next to me.

Is this normal or a bit crazy? It really pisses me off.

But I can't say anything really, can I?

OP posts:

MadamG · 24/04/2015 13:59

Damn annoying. Can you use headphones? Blocks out a little background stuff?

Original poster

ShaynePunim · 24/04/2015 14:03

No I can't really because I need to be on the phone all the time or speaking to other people around me. Or to her!

I see people in my office with headphones and they do the same job as me so obviously it's possible but I think it would stress me, the idea of missing someone speaking to me because I didn't hear them. :D

OP posts:

DrDre · 24/04/2015 14:07

Very annoying. It would stop me concentrating.

DramaAlpaca · 24/04/2015 14:08

I used to share an office with someone like this. It was very annoying. One day I even heard her talking to herself about me, having a moan about something I apparently hadn't done . She was very when she realised I'd heard her.

Cheby · 24/04/2015 14:10

You have my sympathies OP! I started a new job 6 months ago and one of my colleagues talks to himself all the fucking time. He reads all of his emails out loud, constantly mutters under his breath about what he's doing, grumbles about colleagues or people from other organisations. On too of that he can also be an aggressive bully.

So I got a new job (promotion elsewhere!) and am currently serving my notice. Haven't told annoying guy yet, he will be cross because he is older than me and a man, and I will be more senior than him. He has expressed this sort of thought before. I am looking forward to casually dropping my new job into the conversation!! :)

FadedRed123 · 24/04/2015 14:12

Can you not just have a gentle word with her and say how hard it is for you to concentrate? She mightn't realise she is doing it, or at a level when others can hear her. She won't know unless someone tells her.

MadamG · 24/04/2015 14:13

Can I suggest an early intervention may be needed, get tea together and tell her you are finding it distracting? Explain the impact on you, giving examples of times and incidents when it's been worse? If you leave it to fester it's harder to deal with later and better to raise it to her than anyone else? She may not know she's doing it but if she can control it at all she should

gotredonyou · 24/04/2015 14:13

Yep my colleague is the same...sighing, muttering, moaning all day. Sometimes I zone out but I find it helps if I respond to her talking to herself. e.g- asking whats the matter? Can I help with anything? It makes her realise that I think she is talking to me rather than herself so she shuts up for a few hours lol

FenellaFellorick · 24/04/2015 14:15

Maybe she's not aware she's doing it? What about saying "sorry, what were you saying?"

Or letting her know it's distracting.

Unless she's doing it in order to make you ask her what's up, so she can go on about something, in which case ignore ignore ignore.

TheFlis12345 · 24/04/2015 14:16

I used to sit next to a guy who did this. A few jokey comments about talking to yourself being a sign of madness, and "having a nice little chat there? " soon cut it back dramatically, but that was to someone I knew pretty well so it might come across rude if you don't.

Jelliebabe1 · 24/04/2015 14:18

My colleague hums with no apparent tune all the time... drove me batty to start with but now I luffs her and can tune it out!

balletnotlacrosse · 24/04/2015 14:20

I worked for years in shared offices and am so glad I have my own room now. Every office seemed to have:

The person who talked at top volume on the phone
The person who listened to all their messages on speaker
The person whose mobile was constantly bleeping and dinging and singing.
The person who was always crouching down beside people's desks and whispering secretively
The person who liked to sigh dramatically and slam things around, hoping someone would ask them 'what's wrong'?

Original poster

ShaynePunim · 24/04/2015 14:30

Haha eah I could have a word but I'm feeling a bit self-conscious about being the 'noise police' in my office.

I'm already the smelly food police and the 'put your rubbish in the bins' police and the 'who left last last night and didn't set the alarm' police.

Doesn't help I was the only woman in the office until last week...

OP posts:

limitedperiodonly · 24/04/2015 15:41

Oh dear. I talk to myself. Usually: 'Right!' or 'What do we have to do now then?'

I tut and sigh though it means nothing tragic or pointed at anyone else.

I make loud phone calls. If I'm getting on with the caller they get really loud.

Most offices I've worked in have been pretty loud and boisterous and I don't understand people who want Trappist silence. I've learned to drown it out.

I regard people who wear earphones or angrily point and mouth: 'I'm on the PHONE!' like you've just farted in church as eccentric.

In fact I hate offices that are really quiet. I was working in one recently and I found the atmosphere oppressive. Nobody chatted and everyone whispered down the phones.

There's only been one person who came close to annoying me. He used to startle me by suddenly singing snatches of songs like a demented parrot.

The summer that Mambo No 5 was a hit and hearing: 'A little bit of Monica...' about 500 times a day was a bit wearing

Skiptonlass · 24/04/2015 16:03

You need to do the following, every single time, even if it's a hundred times a day.

Mutterer: mutter mutter mumble mutter
You: hmm? Sorry, what did you say?
Mutterer: nothing
You: oh ok, I thought you needed something. You were talking to yourself.

Every time. Every single time.

There is a special place in hell for whoever introduced the open plan office. In their own circle of hell they will have to put up with endless distraction, muttering imps, demons who don't wash or talk at maximum volume about shit TV, Devils that take personal calls at full volume, and microwave fish based lunches...urrrggghhh...

bruffin · 24/04/2015 16:05

You would love our office, just the 3 of us and we all mutter a lot

limitedperiodonly · 24/04/2015 16:07

In the days before emails a colleague sent a long memo to the managing editor complaining about me and the two others who shared her bench.

Our crimes were many and varied. One of them was 'the noise of idle chatter between Limited, X and X which frequently mean I have to go home early (I suffer from a nervous complaint).'

She also complained about the 'clatter of typewriters and constantly ringing phones.' We couldn't do much about that; what with it being a newspaper in the mid-'80s. If it was 150 years earlier she would have complained about the distressing sound of the scratching of quills and gnawing of rats in the wainscotting.

I'm quoting directly because I kept it - his PA sent copies to us as a heads up - and I've just dug out the yellowing copy. It's hilarious.

The PA sent back a memo to the complainer saying that she was holding on to the complaint because she might want to consider whether she was in the right job before bothering the managing editor and making him wonder the same thing.

Fluffyears · 24/04/2015 17:32

I mutter it helps me think. Move seat if it bothers you.

limitedperiodonly · 24/04/2015 17:37

Shall we unite into an office of annoying mutterers and chatters bruffin and fluffyyears?

IME it's more fun than taking a vow of silence.

PerfectlyPosed · 24/04/2015 17:44

I had a colleague that sat behind me and did this all day. Eventually I gave up asking what she'd said each time and assumed that if she needed to say something to me she would wheel herself over and talk to me directly. I did very well at zoning her out in the end but mostly because I was concentrating on Mumsnet...

Icimoi · 24/04/2015 17:47

What I always hated about open plan offices was that people regarded it as an invitation to interrupt me all day, whether to ask questions, sign things, check things or whatever. It was OK some of the time, but if I was doing something complicated or urgent it was really annoying to have to keep stopping, even if only to say "Sorry, can't stop, please could you come back later." I reached a point when I was known to put a large sign up saying "Go Away! This Means You!" but it still didn't necessarily work. I thought about a serious campaign for some sort of office-wide strictly enforced Do Not Disturb signal, but then I left anyway and got a job with my own office. I think now I'd rather stop work completely than return to open plan.

poorbuthappy · 24/04/2015 17:49

9 of us in an open plan office - 3 complete departments. We all mutter talk alot.
But we have managed to learn to tune each other out somehow. Lucky I guess.

But then we still have those "friends" moments, where someone hums or sings 1 line of a song/tune and then everyone else joins in.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 24/04/2015 17:59

In my old job I muttered away but it was OK because the lovely, lovely colleague I shared with was doing the same (often in Italian). When I moved to my current job I swiftly realised that nobody else in the office is a mutterer. I've had to learn to keep stum. It's very hard, but I think otherwise I will sound even more nutty than I do otherwise. Sigh.

WhiteConverseSkinnyJeans · 24/04/2015 18:01

if I had to work in an office ever again I swear I would end up in prison

annoying, annoying bastards

Momagain1 · 24/04/2015 18:19

I married a mutterer. Dh is a professor, so thinks for a living, sometimes thinking leaks out as assertive muttering. It took a while for me not to react as if it were the same as my df's passive aggressive muttering which escalated into yelling, etc. I could ignore it.

As our ds moves through the potential ASD process, I realise this muttering may be a symptom of same. Here is our apple, here is the tree it fell not far from. Ds talks constantly to himself, his toys, his pencil or crayons, me.

They both pace too. Aaaaarrrrrggghhh!

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