Flattened

I tend to walk around in my own world quite a bit. And when I get involved in something, even my own thought world, my hearing tends to shut off. This infuriated my mother when I was a child and I would read and completely miss her yelling for/at me. She claims it was all 'selective hearing', but it wasn't conscious because I truly didn't hear her.

At work, this has translated into being easily surprised. It started back in college when I worked in a pilot plant. The plant had electric forklifts that were stealth like hunting cats (well, to me, anyway) and the guys soon figured out that they could sneak up behind me in the stealth forklift cats and honk the horn, causing me to jump out of my skin. "Hahahah! Jumpy!!"... and thus I became known as Jumpy. Thanks fellas.

In my previous job I would actually be involved in my work (shocking, I know) and I would lean in closer and closer to my computer screen. One day my boss decided to present a photo from the latest golf outing by coming up behind me and putting it between my face and the screen. Not having heard him come up, it scared the crap out of me and I screamed and flailed. I'm still occaisionally surprised at my desk, but nothing of that magnitude has happened since.

Walking around in a dazed little world is somewhat dangerous in a plant. Our plant manager frequently overtakes me as I walk (not that I walk slow, but he's roughly 6-4 or so and my legs don't move THAT fast) and says hello from behind. I startle. On a side note, one more note that we were too dissimilar to work together is the fact that he didn't find my startle reaction humorous and begin to use it against me, as I would for someone who startled easily. You have to find the weak ones and pick 'em out of the herd! Or something like that...

Since we moved down closer to the manufacturing operations, I am again close to many fork lift operators. Only these operators don't move as slow and are driving in much more limited space than my pilot plant job. They scare me, and they scare most other people here, too. Our office area door opens directly into a fork lift path and we are all gunshy of just stepping out that door. These drivers don't slow down when they see you, they just honk and expect that you'll move. We constantly hear beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep from the floor, and we know someone has a forklift bearing down on them.

At any point there are 5-6 forklifts heading to and from the floor, honking all the way. They've finally gotten me out of my daze, though. I'm just constantly jumpy from the beeping now.