3 hours until the end of the day.

3 hours until the end of the day. You look at the clock in the corner of your Windows menu and you realize that there are 3 hours until the end of the day. And you wonder how it is that time can be moving so slowly. You wonder if time is actually sliding backwards.

There’s a girl that sits across the long cube wall from you. She has sat there for almost 3 months and yet you’ve never introduced yourself to her. At this point, it would almost seem a little creepy to introduce yourself. You are separated by the cube wall so you cannot see each other. Your faces are probably no more than 4 feet apart for a good 8 hours a day and yet you don’t know each other. You don’t even know what her face looks like.

There isn’t a better statement on office culture than that.

But she sits there 4 feet from your face all day. Only today she is coughing a lot. Every cough of hers breaks your concentration. You look at the clock in the corner of your Windows menu. You know what happens from there.

This girl’s coughs are being answered in the distance by another co-workers cough. It’s like a mating song:

Call. Response.
Call. Response.

With all this coughing, it’s like being outside in the summertime at night when the crickets are rubbing their legs together, squeaking and creaking. They’re trying to get each other’s attention and you’re surrounded by it.

Only it’s not summertime. And you’re not outside. And it’s not nighttime. But still, you’re surrounded by it.

This faceless, coughing girl who is 4 feet from you, well, today, you hate her guts. And you wish she'd die from that cough. You hope she hacks herself six feet under. And you wonder how long it will be until you get sick. Until you get that whooping cough of hers.

You wonder how many hours it takes for germs to travel over a cube wall. Hopefully less than 3.