[targonca]

>white noise over the speakers

W-what? I know some people swear that white noise makes them concentrate better, but forcing everyone to listen to white noise? Wtf. I'm not even sure that's legal from an occupational health & safety standpoint.

[joezydeco]

It's the most common kneejerk reaction to employees that complain that the open office is too noisy - that loud conversations in the room or, hell, right over your shoulder are distracting you from focusing properly on your work.

Instead of investigating the social fixes to the problem (asking people to take phone calls in private rooms, having arguments/meetings in private rooms, enabling sidetone in noise-cancelling headphones so people don't scream into conference calls), the proposed answer is a Simple Little Widget(tm) they can buy that will fix everything: the white noise generator.

Except now you have a layer of white noise on top of all the loud conversations. And white noise doesn't mask human speech at all unless it's louder than the speech itself. So nothing is fixed.

[rootusrootus]

It is common. You have likely experienced it without even realizing it. The point of the white noise is to reduce the distance voices carry in open environments so they are less distracting. Some places crank it pretty loud, though, to the point where it becomes an irritant.

[mcguire]

NASA Enterprise Applications Competency Center (yes, that's a thing), Marshall Space Flight Center Bldg. 4601.

Offices for the important people, high cubicles for semi-important people, shorter cubicles for the peons. White noise generators to reduce the excess conversation interruptions. (It didn't help me, my cube was outside one of the few large, unallocated meeting rooms, which got used by everyone at MSFC. I got to listen to the meetings until I started working from home.) Oh, and the AC goes off at 3:00p.m. to save money. By 5:00, everyone still working is rather sweaty.