please empty your brain below

They'd get rid of her, but they need the eggs.
I feel your pain. I've worked with someone like that in the past. It's awful.

You can only hope she gets transferred or she leaves. Trouble is, who would have her?
"Shut up dear"? You don't like to hear a woman laughing?
There is a simple answer - when the laughing starts get out of your seat - walk over there - stop, wait - observe.....it'll either stop or you'll discover what's funny.
I guess you'll have to bring it up in your next one to one with your boss - how someone's loudness is interfering with your ability to do your job in the open plan office.

Aside: Open plan offices are the single worst idea ever, but because they allow a company to cram 30 people into the space of ten two-person offices... productivity be damned.
at least you don't seem to have reached the really neurotic level of being convinced they're laughing at you

is it possible to try music ... fairly low level obviously, but it just might mask the laughing noise enough to take the sting out of it
You have blogged about your boss who might have suspected that you are DG. After reading this post they will know for sure.
I'm afraid the only solution is to become a dear friend of this lady. Just go over and ask with a dashing smile, 'I simply must know what you're laughing about, you seem to be having so much more fun than anyone else here'. Once you get to know her your brain will filter out the sounds as 'trusted' and you won't be driven to distraction every two minutes.

I know someone like this and she is the most genuine, fun and beautiful of souls. I worked with her in close proximity for years and never got irritated. I see strangers flinching as she walks past, but it would break her heart to tell her that she makes other people furious.
Definitely a change from buses!
Try living next door to a male version of this person, with a machine-gun laugh so loud it can be heard 2 floors up in the next property and a frequency of every 30 seconds when in full flow (usually between the hours of 9pm-2am or whenever he decided to go to bed). Now that is a laugh that the CIA could weaponise.
Try a large pair of headphones. You don't have to have them playing anything - unless you can still hear her!
A minor point as I enjoyed the piece and can relate - but I think it would have been just as effective without the gender specific terms. Men and women can have tortuous laughs but a man wouldn't be called a witch/ banshee for doing so.
@ s

true.

and could hint at why female readership of this blog may be low.

mind you society/media has a role to play in this too. quite a few programmes/adverts on television seem to 'pit' women vs men/men vs women. would we tolerate/accept this if was done based on age/colour/social background/belief...doubt it.
I've only just looked up the definition of "banshee", and discovered it's specifically female, sorry. As for "witch", in Paganism that's a gender-neutral term.

Apologies if my regular stereotyping of women is keeping female readers away.

Also apologies to everyone else in the office today. My protracted conversations were definitely more annoying than the coven's cackling.
A possible solution...print out this page, removing the reference about people hearing yourself, perhaps also print out some of the readers comments as well, then tape them to her pc screen when no one is around...she may take a hint and be quieter...
Greg reckons that DG has blown his cover. I'm not so sure. I reckon he has done a bit of anonymising. Don't know how he's done it, and I probably shouldn't say if I did, but there's doubtless something in today's entry to put colleagues off the scent.

I agree that people's laughs can be annoying, and I also agree that it helps a lot if you know the person well. But sadly, we're not built to make friends easily with people who annoy us.
DG,

Do you work on the 1st floor of your office? If so, I think you might work in the same place as me - I have one of those too.....
So what happened to the idea of 'Laugh and the whole world laughs with you' and 'Always look on the bright side of life'?
@s and @e - glad it was not just me that felt slightly uncomfortable with the gender specificity. That said, I don't think it is regular stereotyping, just perhaps inadvertence. But it is hard to gloss "shut up dear" as gender-neutral. See Mary Beard's recent lecture "Oh Do Shut Up Dear!" on the sliencing of women in the public sphere - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ycql8
@ Andrew

i'm feel "slightly uncomfortable" with "gender specificity" regardless of gender. there are just as many cases of it against men as there are against women.
@DG

as for the term 'witch' one could go with the old meaning. one could also look-up the term on "Urban Dictionary" an see it's more modern usage.
Point taken, thanks.

She really does laugh like a character from Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1, though.
@E

One could just as easily look up the correct use of the humble apostrophe on the Internet too, but since that was clearly too much work for you, you're in no position to judge.
@ Steve

I didn't do too well at school and English is my second language. But I still retain the right to judge...and my point must of been a valid one or else there be would not been further comments made by you or DG?










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