click click click clickety click (backspace) click.

Um, can I rant?

So I'm sitting in the back of a computer lab today learning the ins, the outs, and the abouts of how we keep track of our finances at my workplace. Fascinating stuff, really.

Fascinating.

And I'm sitting there - being, you know, fascinated - when the girl next to me, two feet away probably, at the most, begins an email dialogue with a friend of hers. Using her work email, I notice, being all of two feet away, so I immediately, with my sharp-edged brain and all, deduce that this friend is probably also a colleague.

Perhaps this colleague works in Finance and this presentation was particularly relevant to her situation. Perhaps the girl next to me was simply relaying the most interesting parts of the talk, of which there were obviously hundreds.

What matters is that this email dialogue - at least on my end of things - consisted of loud, rapid keyboard clicking almost constantly for the entire three hours of the class. And not only did I give her AT LEAST SEVEN (admittedly covert) dirty looks, attempting to send irritated brain waves across the tiny gap between us, but also everyone in front of us did their part by turning and aiming glares. Some of them were a little too fanatic and sent glares flying indiscriminately towards our entire table. (I used my brain waves to convey soothing thoughts to them that I was not the culprit.) (Also, I scootched my chair back away from my computer and folded my arms for good measure.)

A couple other things of note happened.

1. During a break halfway through the class, the instructor waited until he thought we were all back in the room and then kindly asked us to please refrain from sending emails during his presentation. Cleverly, this girl - by far the most criminal of the several offenders to whom he spoke - did not reappear in the room until approximately 30 SECONDS after he finished.

Wily like a fox, that one.

2. During the break, the instructor passed out evaluation forms for us to fill out, which, once she had returned late, this girl immediately spent as much time as possible filling out, carefully inserting a long-winded opinion about something in every one of those optional spaces where they give you a final chance to explain why you circled 3 instead of 2. I can't imagine how she had any opinion whatsoever about the presentation, because she hadn't yet shown any signs of actually having heard any of it. And, once she finished, she immediately whipped open the email page and began typing furiously. Perhaps discussing with her friend why she felt 3 was the appropriate choice. Perhaps this was relevant in some way to her friend's job.

3. She also got up once to leave the room and twice to throw something away during each of our less than 1.5 hour sections. Now that was just annoying.

4. OH! And also? Near the end, when he seemed just about to finish but then said something like, "Oh, and you can use the H command too, let me just show you..." she actually flopped her head down to her chest and produced a very heavy, very passionate sigh.

5. Oh, and ALSO? She had this extremely annoying purse with, like, bumblebees interspersed with letters of the alphabet on it or something. I sent it some dirty looks too, for good measure.

6. But that's just catty.

7. Ohmygod, I've totally got to go call Denise in Finance and tell her EVERYTHING.

But I think I'll wait until I get to work.