Help! My Colleague Has a Routine That Gets Her Through the Night Shift. Unfortunately, It Involves Tormenting Me.
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)
I work 12-hour night shifts. We tend to work in relatively small teams of three to six people per “shift,” and for the most part, we end up working with the same people every night. My problem is “Annie.”
Annie is a nice and fun person to chat with, but whenever our shift starts, she starts playing her music out loud on her phone and doesn’t turn it off for the entire 12-hour night. It’s not uncommon for someone to play music, usually a radio station or something at a low volume, so the music itself isn’t an issue … it’s her.
She plays the same songs over and over and sings horribly off-key for the entire shift. She’s really quite terrible. If she’s not singing, she’s loudly humming, harmonizing, or something similarly noxious and intrusive. I realize that any one of the rest of us could opt to play our own music, but for the most part, the rest of us like to quietly read or scroll on our phones during downtime. The nature of our job has us all in relatively small, close quarters all night, and we cannot use headphones. I can’t tell if anyone else finds her music and singing as irritating as I do, so I never want to say or do anything in case I am the office grump, but I am so very sick of listening to her live concert for 12 hours between tasks at work every night. Her off-key harmonizing to loud mid-2010s pop music at 3 a.m. is enough to make me want to dig my eyes out, but she’s not really doing anything wrong or abnormal, so perhaps the problem is me. Do I do or say something, or just get over it?
Twelve hours of mid-2010s pop is a lot. Twelve hours of any non-professional singing is a lot. I guarantee that you’re not the only one who’s annoyed. In fact, you must have the most polite workplace ever. How has no one said, “Annie, if you sing ‘Shake It Off’ one more time, I’m going to have a mental breakdown,” or even the old classic, “Hey Annie, who sings that? Let’s keep it that way.”
I have three ideas for you:
Talk to a manager or supervisor. Your goal shouldn’t be to report on her, but to explain that you’re struggling and ask for their advice.
Talk to a manager or supervisor. Your goal shouldn’t be to report on her, but to explain that you’re struggling and ask for their advice.
Use earplugs. They’ll at least soften the sounds of singing and hopefully, make it more tolerable.
Use earplugs. They’ll at least soften the sounds of singing and hopefully, make it more tolerable.
Gather all your confidence and simply speak to Annie: “I hate to be the office grump, but a lot of background noise while I’m working can be really distracting for me. Would you be willing to cut back—not even for the whole night shift, but maybe half?”
Gather all your confidence and simply speak to Annie: “I hate to be the office grump, but a lot of background noise while I’m working can be really distracting for me. Would you be willing to cut back—not even for the whole night shift, but maybe half?”
Me and my two siblings were never close—no issues really, just totally different people. Recently, I won a bit of money in the lottery, not a huge amount, but it was nice. As an attempt to build a closer connection to my brothers, I gave them some of the money…