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Office noise bothers some people more than others

bbc.com

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Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#41

Post by leetrout »

t34543 wrote: post #35
nkrisc wrote: post #3

Constant coughing and throat clearing drive me up the wall . I despise working around most smokers as many of them have this unconscious, horrid smoker's cough that they do a few times a minute on average, it seems (I haven't actually counted). But any constant throat clearing sets me off and I usually have to leave or I can't focus on anything. The type of throat clearing I'm talking about is when someone really jus…

I can’t stand mastication noise. I must leave the area or drown it out, block any visible signs of eating, and take a few deep breaths.

Do you identify as someone that has misophonia?

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#42

Post by giggles_giggles »

cowpewter wrote: post #32
scythe wrote: post #22

I've started chewing nicotine gum while in the office/class and found that it helps a lot with making the noise more tolerable. I have a history of smoking and vaping, so I don't recommend it to naive people. It appears to be bad for me so I try to minimize it: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.cir.94.5.878

Do you have (or suspect you might have, but be undiagnosed) ADHD? Nicotine is a stimulant. It improves concentration for individuals with ADHD, for much the same reasons that prescription stimulant drugs do. I picked up nicotine gum, and eventually switched to vaping myself, as a form of self-medication for my ADHD. If it really helps you block out distracting noises and sights from a busy office, that might be part…

If I could go back a few years and warn you against using nicotine to self-medicate ADHD, I would. I also have ADHD and kicked a 5 year vaping habit about a year ago. Nicotine might help you focus in the very short term, but if you can't re-up every half hour, it makes it a lot harder to focus in the long term! I spent 4 years as a developer, unable to vape in my shared office, being interrupted every hour by the need to consume more nicotine! Every time I'd come back in from a smoke break it felt like a race against the clock to get back into "the zone" before the nicotine cravings kicked me out again.

You know what has really helped my focus? BREAKING THAT ADDICTION. Please, if anyone else is reading the parent I'm replying to and thinking about starting to use nicotine to self-medicate ADHD trust me it is NOT worth it. It's not worth not being able to enjoy a whole movie or show because you need to intake nicotine. It's not worth being trapped in airplanes without being able to vape. It's not worth the chemical dependence, even if you "only" get addicted to the gum or patch. Please hear my appeal to what a terrible idea the parent comment is proposing! Nicotine is the absolute worst drug.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#43

Post by jagged-chisel »

gnode wrote: post #15
jagged-chisel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article doesn't mention noise as the subject of the article - the word appears once on the page. Are you in the right place?

Although not about noise pollution, it does bring to mind the question of how well some of these studies might have controlled for the effect of noise pollution, which would likely have an effect on cognition, and correlate with air pollution.

Not sure how controlling for noise pollution affects studying air pollution - can you elucidate? Still, I don't understand how noise pollution anecdotes are relevant to an article on air pollution.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#44

Post by Kye »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #16
zabzonk wrote: post #7

People put with noise far more than they have to. Here are a few of my experiences: - moved into an office where a very noisy dot-matrix printer printed out every opening and closing of a door in the building. Nobody ever looked at the printouts. I unplugged it and put it in a dumpster. Nobody ever complained. - working for an oil company, my boss was sitting next to a big HP plotter that was horribly noisy - he wore…

Did you mean to post here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565841

That's what I was thinking. I had both open in tabs from the front page. I can see someone getting mixed up doing the same.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#46

Post by fenwick67 »

isoskeles wrote: post #20
coupdejarnac wrote: post #8

I see no mention of genetic predisposition to hating office noise. 23andme looks for a marker that indicates hating the sound of chewing, misophonia. Maybe something similar is at play for other noises.

I have a hatred of the sound of any marker dragging against (non-glossy) paper. It's torturous to me, makes me physically cringe and grind my teeth when I hear the noise. And conversely, marker-against-glossy-paper is a very pleasing sound to me. Now I'm wondering if that's genetic and how many other people have the same experience with those sounds.

Dry marker on paper along with styrofoam rubbing together for me.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#49

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #11
zabzonk wrote: post #7

People put with noise far more than they have to. Here are a few of my experiences: - moved into an office where a very noisy dot-matrix printer printed out every opening and closing of a door in the building. Nobody ever looked at the printouts. I unplugged it and put it in a dumpster. Nobody ever complained. - working for an oil company, my boss was sitting next to a big HP plotter that was horribly noisy - he wore…

That was a very, very stupid thing to do. https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-parable-of-chestertons-fen...

This is one of these interesting issues that you can use to tell conservatives from progressive types. In some cases, there might indeed be some valid reason behind some old rule that currently seems elusive, but in many cases it's just superstition, and in any case you often can't find it out unless you challenge the rule.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#50

Post by dang »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #16
zabzonk wrote: post #7

People put with noise far more than they have to. Here are a few of my experiences: - moved into an office where a very noisy dot-matrix printer printed out every opening and closing of a door in the building. Nobody ever looked at the printouts. I unplugged it and put it in a dumpster. Nobody ever complained. - working for an oil company, my boss was sitting next to a big HP plotter that was horribly noisy - he wore…

Did you mean to post here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565841

We've moved it to the noise thread from the air pollution thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21565624, where it was originally posted.
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