Monday, January 31, 2005
How do obnoxious people have absolutely no idea that they are obnoxiou? Why do they get let off the hook in such a way? Why must we all endure them in silence? Couldn't one of us sit them down and say, "Look. I'm sure you want to be liked. I'm sure you don't understand how obnoxious you are. Let me tell you the ways in which you irritate the hell out of everyone." It would be a public service, no? And good for them, too?

There is a teacher here who has what a friend of mine describes as talkamonia syndrome. It is this syndrome makes a person believe that everyone would be happy just to sit an listen to them talk, whether or not they have anything on topic or of interest to say. These people cannot let a comment go by without responding to it, even if what they are going to say has just been said by someone else. This person turns "quick" gatherings into marathons and makes your heart sink when they walk through a door of one of your meetings. These people have a tendency to miss every other meeting and so then must be brought to speed when they do appear and they insist on asking a million questions about things that people who were responsible enough to show up have already covered.

One such gentleman who suffers from this works at my school. Today the conversation in the meeting went something like this:

Me: We are here to talk about the Career Fair and divide up the tasks.
Him: Yeah, well, before we get to that, what are we going to do about L’s suspension?
Me: We came to a conclusion about that last time. I’ll be happy to catch you up later, but right now we need to—
Him: Yeah, because I’m not going to tolerate that kind of behavior from him. Once, when I told him to—
Me: Please, if we can just get to—
Him: --go back to class and do you know what he did? He—

I wished him slight harm by the end of the fourty minute meeting that was scheduled to last ten. He needs an intervention.
¶ 1:38 PM