Why didn't I join the Army when I had the chance?

My cube is right next to the clerical’s desk, and the supply cabinet is almost directly behind me. This incredibly desirable location comes with many features like:

1)Hearing every phone call the clerical receives and initiates. This includes those wonderful personal conversations. She’s pregnant AND has a kid she is trying to toilet train. No conversation before 10 in the morning should include the word ‘grunt’, you know what I mean? And I’m not really interested in the state of your bowel movements, thank you. I was pregnant, too, and no one except for my poor beleaguered husband was clued in to the state of my intestines. And, believe it or not, if you repeat something exactly as your kid says it twenty times, it just isn’t cute. It may, however, result in a stapler being thrown over my cube wall and **accidentally** embedding itself into your forehead.

2)Being a part of every trip to the supply cabinet. The cabinet is metal, so when the door is opened, it makes a loud clanging sound. Then, if the person stands there for a few minutes, the clerical will ask them if they need some help finding something. More times than not, it is something that they would NEVER find in the supply cabinet. I’ve heard people looking for stamps, toilet paper, clothes hangers, nail clippers, nail polish remover, and Vaseline(I don’t want to know).

3)Providing visual stimulation to my coworkers. If the clerical is busy, and someone is waiting for her to become not busy, they like to stand directly in my cubicle “doorway” and stare over my shoulder at my monitor. I installed a mirror on my monitor after finding one too many of them standing there, silently, and completely without my knowledge. Creepy.

In addition the person in the cube right next to mine is a real class act. He likes to talk about EVERYONE behind their back, is extremely paranoid, and loves to talk FOREVER about things you don’t want to know about him. I know when his wife had her IUD removed to try for another child, I know the night that they tried, and that she is pregnant now. I know the entire plan for his big drain rerouting project in his yard. Every time one of the bosses comes by to speak to me about something, he always comes over to tell me all of the bad things that the boss has done to him in the past. Yesterday he announced that he was “going to go poop”. Either they won’t talk to me at all, or they talk WAAAYY too much.