231–240 of 461 posts
As much as I dislike the interruptions of an open office, I breathe better walking into an open office instead of a cubicle farm, which are downright depressing. Not to mention trying to find a co-worker - downright impossible unless you peek into each cubicle or you know which one he/she's at beforehand.
The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…
If you want to watch soccer, take a vacation day.
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“flexdesks” or “hot desking” is just about the most juvenile reaction to working from home I can imagine. If a company believes it will gain more from “saving money” on open plan offices or hot desking than it will from just paying more to facilitate more and better work from employees through buying the best tools (a private office is a tool like a keyboard or ergonomic chair), it’s self-evidently a company to get f…
Communal keyboards are worse than communal toilet seats. Especially when some people eat at their desks.
Generic rubber dome keyboards are torture — chiclet style keyboards surely violate a bunch of Geneva conventions.
Never mind the filth and grime.
I will keep a mouse and keyboard in the office under lock and key somewhere if I end up in that situation.
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Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise. Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking di…
The thing is that this working-from-home people significantly impact the efficiency of your office. It's a trend (could be the open-office space started it) but resulted in people easily working 2 or more days from home. That implies that any desk you have is empty about 40% of the time. Or: your entire office is not being used for 40%... So when bosses realised they were throwing money away, they came up with the op…
It's just unfortunate that the commute here in the Bay Area has gotten so bad that a lot of people end up working from home.
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> bombarded with constant cheering At least it ends. I work in a gigantic "airplane hangar" open office with no noise barriers of any kind stretching out to infinity. Everybody around me is on conference calls all day, every day. They put their phones on speaker and then yell louder and louder to be heard over each other. One of them is even one of the Important People with an office with a door that closes... which…
Get any generic in-ear earphones and thread those under a pair of 3M peltor optime III ear defenders. You can listen to even fairly quiet music and you won't hear any conversations around you.
Thanks though.
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> bombarded with constant cheering At least it ends. I work in a gigantic "airplane hangar" open office with no noise barriers of any kind stretching out to infinity. Everybody around me is on conference calls all day, every day. They put their phones on speaker and then yell louder and louder to be heard over each other. One of them is even one of the Important People with an office with a door that closes... which…
Get any generic in-ear earphones and thread those under a pair of 3M peltor optime III ear defenders. You can listen to even fairly quiet music and you won't hear any conversations around you.
Glad I got out of that hellhole.
The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering, which is my current situation. Even when soccer is over, you have to contend with people playing grab-ass all over the office, or jerks (like me) with annoyingly loud keyboards. The modicum of utility of me "jumping into a conversation" really goes out the w…
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That and dogs in the office. Jesus what’s wrong with people. (The fact you’re being downvoted is proof we are living in the end times.)
we have dogs in the office. they're quiet and most people love them. in any case they are the least of the distractions...and usually only if you made the miserable decision to eat lunch at desk (which in an open office can be even more of a nuisance)
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Yeah and what kills me is how ubiquitous tellocomms are for multi-site corps. I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where everyone was at their desk, headphones on and each was playing the mute/unmute game in order to not blast everyone else on the meeting with the surrounding noise. Then, given all that, you get the coworker two seats down Slacking you. If you're Slacking folks within 10 seconds walking di…
> what's the point of being in the office at all Amen. We can work remotely. Let me work in my home office.
I'm sitting here now because there's scheduled railway maintenance going on. If not I prefer traveling to the office (it's more than 45 minutes each way.)
But as long as everyone can choose for themselves I think more people probably should work from home.
Mark, the eighties called and they want their open-plan office back