The woman who works next to me has such a great six-inch voice. It’s like the walls around her just suck up everything she says until all that’s left is an unintelligible, productive-sounding murmur. I, on the other hand, seemed to have missed that day in kindergarten, so my six-inch voice sounds something like HEY YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE OFFICE, DID YOU HEAR EVERY AWKWARD, STUTTERING MOMENT OF MY LAST INTERVIEW INCLUDING MY APOLOGY FOR BEING LATE AND I HOPE YOU DIDN’T MISS ANYTHING THAT’S GOING ON IN MY PERSONAL LIFE. GOT THAT? NO? OK I’LL TALK A LITTLE LOUDER.

Or at least that’s what it feels like when I get off the phone.

I thought I was being paranoid. I even asked the lady with the six-inch voice if I was being too loud. She said no. I said WHAT? But she told me not to worry because she didn’t notice that I was being particularly loud. I said OK, THANKS A LOT. I JUST WANTED TO CHECK.

And made a mental note to make an appointment with my doctor to discuss how I’m going deaf.

But I felt better. The six-inch-voice lady is nice (like me!) and certainly would tell me if I were talking loudly.

But then! I was listening to the intern who sits on the other side of the cubicle wall: “HI, I WAS WONDERING IF I COULD SPEAK TO, UH, UM, MR. …YES, PLEASE? THANK YOU [NERVOUS LAUGH] [NERVOUS LAUGH] HI, UH, I WAS WONDERING, CAN I SCHEDULE A TIME TO UH, YES, INTERVIEW YOU? [NERVOUS LAUGH] OK GREAT THAT, YES, I, THAT SOUNDS GREAT! [NERVOUS LAUGH] THANK YOU SO MUCH! [NERVOUS LAUGH] I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO SPLEAKING […NERVOUS PAUSE…] UM, WITH YOU TOO! [NERVOUS LAUGH] OK! THANKS! GOODBYE TO Y-"

And I got a little more paranoid.

It’s not like she was yelling. But it was definitely …loud. It was definitely exactly what I had feared I sounded like. And it was definitely the type of thing nice six-inch-voice ladies would be nice enough not to point out.

And I’ve tried to learn from the six-inch-voice lady, believe me. I am continually awed by how her voice is so unintelligible from a distance yet so clear and normal-sounding from up close. When I try to speak quietly it sounds like I’m doing a bad impression of a porn star. I seem to have gotten the breathy whisper lesson instead of the six-inch voice lesson—which has its advantages! But I’m not sure how the president/CEO of one of the top travel business auditing companies felt about it.

Anyway, at least now that my boss is gone and the intern’s not around and the publisher is gone and the knee-high f*ck me boot-wearing vice president is gone and the salespeople are gone, there are only three people I could potentially embarrass myself in front of.

And three people who can tell me what the hell is going on when I don’t know what the hell is going on.

Awesome.