Thursday, 07 February 2002 | Private noises

Last September it was announced that the editorial department would move to a new floor, and that we should democratically determine which existing desk space we would receive. We were each handed a crudely drawn map of the editorial department to-be, directions for claiming office space (name your top three choices, 1-3), and a disclaimer: you will probably not get your first choice.

It didn't take me long to choose, since there was only one spot I wanted: the one next to the door, where I could slip in and out unnoticed (innocently, of course), far enough away from my boss's cube so that I wouldn't, um, disturb him if I needed to make a phone call, and wedged into a corner with two real walls. To my surprise I got my first choice, only because my boss reasoned that since I both edit and help with graphics occasionally, I should be positioned between the editors and the graphics people.

So it's been five months, and the benefits are as I expected; basically, I have a little more privacy than I would've, had I ended up elsewhere. Problem is, nobody else has any privacy. Well, that is, nobody in the bathroom. That's right: one of the sturdy plaster walls I was longing for is in fact the only thing separating me from the single-toilet bathrooms. All day I get to hear various liquids going various places at various speeds from various heights.

It's pretty easy to tune it out, or to subconsciously train myself to think of it as something else entirely, but sometimes it occurs to me what it is I'm hearing and, worse, imagining. Yesterday, the girl who sits next to me suddenly said to no one and everyone at the same time, "Oh, man, I just realized what that noise was" and started laughing, referring to the noise that the warped roll of toilet paper in the women's room makes when it gets tugged, the heavy roll falling back on itself, thump, thump, thump. Then, addressing me through our cloth divider, she asked, "How do you stand it?"