Surround Sound

Okay, some people are naturally loud... and I suppose I can't and shouldn't complain too much about that. But then there's this manager whose office is near my cube. I can hear her loud and clear even when her door is closed. Not that sound insulation is that great around here (they should have just used cardboard in the first place and saved even more money).

Anyway, once in a week or so, this manager hosts a conference call with her underlings. This wouldn't have been so bad, but this manager likes to use the speaker phone. We all know that we must speak even LOUDER for the crummy speakerphone to pick up the sound properly. My cube also happens to be surrounded by her underlings, who all happen to think that the use of speakerphones in cubes is really cool. So, I usually end up with this manager's voice booming from her office (it's more like an annoying shrill), and then echoed a number of times as her conversation gets relayed to all the speakerphones around me. And when her minions talk back, I can hear them directly, and also indirectly from their manager's speakerphone. It's like having a conversation from hell blasting from a 7.1 setup. I don't need surround sound at work.

Kill me.