Dear coughing dude in the adjacent cube,
You cough every five minutes. I could set my clock to the sounds of your hacking. Not content with a small, dainty throat-clearing, you expectorate loudly, with noisy, boar-like grunts. You do this on the phone, mid-sentence. The sounds of your whooping carry over to the hallway on the other side of our floor.
I have taken to wearing soundproof headphones at work to block out your noise. They don’t. I hear your phlegmy hacking over the guitar feedback and high pitched howling of Black Sabbath’s live double album. I have phoned Ozzy, and he wants a word with you.
Do you have tuberculosis? An iron lung? Are you suffering from some unfortunate, debilitating respiratory ailment?
If so, I hear there are excellent sanitoria in the Swiss Alps.
If not, then please, please, for the love of all that is decent, STFU.
Your long-suffering neighbor,
Shelly
Graphic from The Main Point by Michael Main