Span

My job requires a significant amount of interaction between other people. Perhaps not as much as a waitress or someone in retail sales, but being a doctor means lots of time spent during the day talking to others: patients, nurses, various techs and assistants, colleagues and the such.

Most people seem to understand the unspoken concept of "personal space" and will maintain a comfortable amount of distance between each other when they are communicating. However, there is this one neurosurgery resident that just doesn't share this common idea. For several days I've had to interact with him, and every time that I'm talking to him, he plainly violates my circumference of comfort (which is not larger than any average person's) and inches closer and closer to me.

Really, honestly, when someone get's too close for my comfort, the only think I can concentrate on is getting them away from me... and I no longer care about what they happen to be happily babbling on about. This other person can be Gandhi, Superman, or Abe Lincoln, but I'm not going to give a hoot what he has to say if his face is looming just 9 inches away from me.

So, I've spent most of today staying busy and avoiding this guy. By communicating with him soley by telephone and pager, I've managed to temporarily rid myself of the Personal Space Violator.