[lqet]

I am not surprised. I was working in an open-plan office for a few years, and I also preferred talking to colleagues sitting only a few meters away via mail. It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking. On the other hand, you also don't want to drag a person into another room for privacy if you just want some quick update on something. Some team members might use noise-cancelling headphones to keep out the typing noise and occasional conversation, but these headphones are an additional barrier for face-to-face talk. You don't want to snap them out of a musical experience, and getting a person with noise-cancelling headphones to notice you are standing behind him/her might get very awkward.

If you are convinced that stuffing people into a room with little to no privacy leads to increased social interaction, you should start riding public transit during rush hour.

[TeMPOraL]

Totally. At my last $dayjob, we had a group chat for the room, where we would type stuff instead of saying it out loud. This way, conversation only flowed between people who were willing to participate at the moment.

(It didn't work perfectly. Typing is silent, but laughing at what you just read isn't.)

[inetknght]

Typing isn't always silent; not everyone has quiet keyboards.

[matz1]

>It's incredibly stressful to talk to a person face-to-face knowing that everyone on the team listens to the conversation. Not only do you have to constantly weight and evaluate your sentences, you also have the constant feeling that you are disturbing other team members just by talking

Fortunately I don't have this physiological barrier. I don't care if everyone on the team listens to the conversation.

[DoreenMichele]

You are probably also oblivious to the very real consequences of other people knowing various things or having partial information, etc.

It's stressful because it has consequences. If you don't find it stressful, you probably are failing to connect the dots and see that x outcome is related to y behavior.

[matz1]

Of course there is consequences for everything, I just embrace it. Having to be stressful because of this is in itself stressfull.

[mercer]

Do you also do this when the 'conversation' is just you making statements about yourself that serve no purpose other than providing you with the pleasure of making statements about yourself?

[matz1]

Not sure what you are talking about ? The poster I'm replying to is about face-to-face conversation with other teammate

[mercer]

Apologies for being a bit snarky, but I found your comment to not really add much to the conversation because it just pointed out that you do not personally suffer from the problems that the person you responded to does.

That, combined with the fact that you don't seem to care how your open-office talk might affect others, reminded me of the various "that guys/gals" that I've encountered in my open-office experiences. They'd regularly annoy or interrupt everyone else in the room by having no consideration, self-awareness and/or sensitivity, and usually they'd do so for the worst reason: talking about themselves. The inane shit they were up to in the weekend, or the funny YouTube video that you just have to watch awkwardly.

But again, my apologies for projecting that on you, because obviously I have no idea if any of this applies. It just reminded me of something that ruined open-offices for me.

[matz1]

>They'd regularly annoy or interrupt everyone else in the room by having no consideration, self-awareness and/or sensitivity, and usually they'd do so for the worst reason: talking about themselves

I understand that, the trick for me is to not let myself to be negatively affected by that, in other words, I make myself to filter out/ignore all those stuff. Its a useful skill to have.

[mercer]

I'm happy for you that that works (really), but I'm probably one of many people, perhaps even the majority, who lacks that skill, and who is significantly affected by 'those guys/gals' to the point of giving up office life for the most part (because I can afford to, though).

I strongly believe that respecting other people means taking into account that they might not possess my particular skill-set, and especially when said respect doesn't cost me much effort but causes others significant stress/discomfort, not showing this respect is just being an asshole.

(Of course, that's assuming that I'm aware of all this. The other side of this 'transaction' is for the other to express whatever problem they might have with my behavior)