[pklausler]

I guess that I fall into this characterization. Over my 36-year career, I've sat in solo offices with doors, shared offices, cubicles with progressively shorter walls, and wall-less high-density desk arrays. I've easily been twice as productive with a door as I am in a noisy environment -- all the other arrangements suck if there is even one inconsiderate human in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucus from one sinus cavity to another, playing desk bongos along with their headphones, or any of the thousand other ways that normal humans can be distracting.

Good headphones help, if only to take control over my own distraction, but honestly this is a management problem. If you want me to be extremely productive, and my productivity is a function of my ability to concentrate, then please just allow me to concentrate.

[ConceptJunkie]

My career sounds similar to yours, just not quite as long, and as someone who's been introduced to an "open office" just this week (and we're not talking low-walled cubicles, but no-walled desks) I hate it, and it's definitely affecting my productivity. Maybe I'll get used to it, but the only improvement I can see is that other teams we work closely with are nearby... but this has nothing to do with an open office and everything to do with the arrangement of teams relative to each other. I've been hiding in the machine room. I may find myself doing that a lot more.

[adrianggg]

I do wonder why I have to purchase good headphones and wear them to combat this problem?

What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term.

Flow is a state of concentration, breaking flow take a longtime to get back in, shouting questions across the room is a context switch and not an asynchronous choice for me if I'm in the middle of something important.

The one inconsiderate person is the worst. The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful. Usually the least intelligent person in the office IMO.

Usually the loudest and most obnoxious member of every team I've worked for seems to have the most production problems....coincidence?

[Arizhel]

>What are the long term impacts of wearing headphones? bacteria growth and hearing loss? Can't be good for my health long term.

For the hearing loss, not necessarily. Get some good noise-canceling headphones that completely cover and enclose the ears, and then either play no music at all or something quiet, at very low volume. With the noise-canceling on and the noise-isolation from the muffs themselves, you'll find you don't need very much volume to hear the music extremely well (human hearing is logarithmic).

However, even the best headphones do have a little weight, which is on your head, and there's always going to be a comfort factor. Wearing them 8 hours straight, day in and day out, may be too much.

>The person unaware that their constant sniffing of mucus is awful.

How are they supposed to help that? It's not their fault that they're sick; people get sick sometimes. It's management's fault for providing you a workspace where there's no privacy at all, so you're forced to see and hear every little thing from your cow-orkers like that. And you can't guarantee that you'll never have a workplace without an annoying or less-intelligent coworker; again it's management's fault for not setting up a work environment that mitigates that factor by giving you some privacy and isolation.

[everybodyknows]

You may find it hard to find audiophile headphones that suppress voices adequately. I had better results with ear muffs from the local hardware store intended for leaf-blowers. Get the biggest, ugliest ones you can find.

[Arizhel]

I have some of these that I use for lawn work, which are designed for shooting guns. They isolate sound pretty well, but they're also not terribly comfortable. They're OK for driving around on my lawn mower for 30 minutes, but there's no way in hell I'd wear them for 8 hours.

[pklausler]

Good idea, especially if they are big enough to fit over Bluetooth earphones (e.g. AirPods).

[Arizhel]

>in the space making a phone call, moving a pound of mucus from one sinus cavity to another, playing desk bongos along with their headphones, or any of the thousand other ways that normal humans can be distracting.

Most of this stuff is not "inconsiderate"; it's just how humans are. People need to make or take phone calls sometimes; how else are you supposed to schedule doctors' appointments and do other life tasks, unless you have a personal secretary (which these companies no longer provide us)? People get sick and need to blow their noses. People get bored and need music (the presence of music in all human cultures, from the dawn of civilization, shows it to be pretty close to a primal need).

The fundamental problem is that humans are not biologically designed to be packed into seated arrangements for hours on end, working quietly without distracting each other. We invented "rooms" for largely this reason, and having separate homes instead of living in one giant communal space, because when we pack ourselves into denser arrangements, we still value having some privacy from one another.

[pklausler]

Responsible adults can go use a phone room, blow their noses, and not tap their fingers on their desktops. It's not that hard to be considerate.

[Arizhel]

Phone rooms don't work. I can't predict the future, so I have no way of knowing exactly what time an incoming phone call will occur. Maybe you can do that, but most of us can't.

Blowing noses? Isn't that what you're complaining about? Or just sniffling? If someone's sick with a cold, they're going to be doing a lot of both. It's not like you can blow your nose once and be good for the rest of the day; if it was like that, then you wouldn't have coworkers sniffling all day long. People get sick. Deal with it.

As for tapping fingers, how's that any more annoying that key clicks, foot tapping, or constant movement? People do all those things too. The fact is, people move. They cannot sit perfectly still and use the minimum necessary motion. Deal with it.

You're asking for people to be super-human. That isn't reasonable or possible. People are what they are, so you need an environment which accounts for that. If you don't have that, then it's management's fault, not the peoples' fault for just being what they are.

Honestly, you sound like someone complaining about cats licking their butts and dogs drooling.

[jaredsohn]

>Phone rooms don't work. I can't predict the future, so I have no way of knowing exactly what time an incoming phone call will occur. Maybe you can do that, but most of us can't.

You can predict that you will be talking on the phone if you are making a call (such as scheduling a doctor appointment). You can walk to a phone room when you receive a call.

[Arizhel]

>You can walk to a phone room when you receive a call.

By then, it's too late: you're now disrupted by the noisy phone ringer, and the start of the conversation.

And what if the phone room is occupied? If the company is really cheap with space, they probably didn't put enough private rooms in to satisfy demand.