oversized grey box in notification panel for empathy

[NoahY]

I actually don't think this is solely an empathy bug, but it is certainly related to empathy. There is a grey box below the networking icon on the notification bar, and it turns to an empathy status icon when empathy is opened. Maybe this is just a "work-in-progress" thing, but it really gets in the way of, say, the search box in Firefox (see screenshots).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: empathy 3.1.5.1-1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.14-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Aug 28 08:50:05 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-08-27 (0 days ago)