Dear Alma, My seat neighbour is a pest

Dear Alma,

I am a member of a very good orchestra. The person one stand over just won’t quit bothering me. They make constant comments on the most absurd things, like where my chair is in relation to their chair, if I am playing the right divisi, that my dynamic is incorrect, the list goes on and on. It happens during every single rehearsal. it’s only when I am in rotation close to her, which is about 1/4 of the time.

Nosy Neighbor

Dear Nosy Neighbor,

Well, how truly annoying! Sounds utterly incessant and must make your skin crawl when that person turns your direction. How does she even live with herself? We can thank our lucky stars that we aren’t married to them, or someone like them – that’s one silver lining to hold on to.

In my youth, I had a really wide variety of boyfriends, all of whom were a mix of thrilling and disasters actively or waiting to happen. Boys under the age of 25 can be kind of a waste of space – totally unaware of how they affect others with their dumb ideas and general lack of any kind of social graces, like they were raised by wolves. But also cute and cuddly. And fun. Some were keepers and some were losers. The key for me was to know when to exit the situations, and how to learn from each relationship so I could take the good memories with me, and avoid the bad traits in future liaisons.

Nosy Neighbor, take stock of your situation. Is the pleasure of your job greater than the annoyance? In this case, enjoy the good and block out the bad. Or, in the case that the annoyance outweighs the good, dump that poor sucker! Just like a boyfriend, there are plenty of other jobs out there if you keep your eyes open and have a wide basket of skills.

You and I both know that you can’t change a person. There is no way for you to make that Nosy Neighbor into the Girl Next Door. But, you could meet with your admin and ask that you don’t get rotated next to that person, or at least less often. Or you can simply turn to them and say “do not speak to me again in rehearsals”. That might work. Give her the hand. That’s made up of 5 fingers, by the way.

When I was younger, I tried and tried again to change those disaster boyfriends. Don’t burp in public, let’s eat something besides pizza and beer, try taking a shower more often. But they can’t and wouldn’t change. It would just make both of us miserable. So – either break up with Nosy Neighbor or jump ship. Life is too short.

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