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Office noise bothers some people more than others

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Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#461

Post by dijit »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #270
chadash wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: John von Neumann, arguably one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, claimed to do some of his best work in front of the TV. In my personal experience, I know plenty of engineers who don't mind noise. I think it's a personal thing more than anything and it's hard to generalize.

A TV is not calling you to chat every 15 minutes, or even talking anything important work-related to distract your focus. It's just noise, the same as working listening to music.

An aside, but an important distinction is that a TV is definitely not something that is going to interact with you, it's just background, it will not change it's behaviour without specific defined inputs (remote control); It cannot affect you either except for the changing of light in the room and it's fully controllable without impacting anyone else.

It's the difference between sitting next to a busker in the street for 8hrs per day and listening to recorded music on your phone.. in that it's a _huge_ difference.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#462

Post by dijit »

baroffoos wrote: post #368
readme wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then get a mechanical keyboard and type louder. That's how you assert dominance.

I hammer away at a cherry blue keyboard at work. No one has complained so far but I suspect it is because I have been here for longer than them.

It's actually a worry of mine that I'm very annoying to those around me in my open office and people are too polite or see me as too intimidating to say anything about it.

I can either be the asshole who doesn't care, and subsequently be freed from my anxiety, or live in anxiety but at least not be as much of an asshole.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#463

Post by jarofgreen »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #458
jarofgreen wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Especially if when one kinda did once, they were told they might be autistic. Not that there is anything wrong with autism, but you can see how armchair psychiatry would put other people off discussing issues ever again.

Where did you get the idea that I go around telling my coworkers that they’re autistic? I have somebody very close to me quite seriously affected by autism, and I simply see a very strong parallel between how they struggle with sensory issues in perfectly normal environments, and the HN trope of complaining about how open offices are too loud. I’ve worked in more than a hundred offices as a consultant, and the only o…

Fair enough then, good for you. Sorry if that was harsher than I should have worded it. I've seen things like that happen before tho, so there definitely are places where staff are afraid to speak up for that reason.

> The real reason people tend to dislike open plan is screen privacy.

Still going to call citation needed on you tho. I've heard many people complain in person, and this wasn't a big reason I heard. The last place I worked, almost every single person spent a lot of money on noise cancelling headphones.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#464

Post by gvurrdon »

airstrike wrote: post #263
navs wrote: post #135

I currently work for a startup and all three of us are hotdesking. We're constantly moved to new spaces in the hotdesking space because a new company is leaving/moving in. I've sat beside recruiters, property managers and salespeople. There's no "quiet" room. The meeting rooms cost a few hundred and need to be pre-booked. My home environment isn't a quiet refuge either. Beside a busy street, more flatmates than their…

Consider connecting wireless headphones to your laptop instead of to your phone I suggest listening to one of the following: 1. Music you don't already know because you can't hum along to them and won't get distracted by the lyrics (Spotify radios can be great, though they get repetitive if you listen to them a lot) 2. Classical music is great if not too tired otherwise it puts you to sleep 3. Deep / underground hous…

I have found Soma FM to be excellent for the purpose of masking annoying noises at work, and pay them a small subscription. They have various channels with a variety of useful genres.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#465

Post by noir_lord »

navs wrote: post #135

I currently work for a startup and all three of us are hotdesking. We're constantly moved to new spaces in the hotdesking space because a new company is leaving/moving in. I've sat beside recruiters, property managers and salespeople. There's no "quiet" room. The meeting rooms cost a few hundred and need to be pre-booked. My home environment isn't a quiet refuge either. Beside a busy street, more flatmates than their…

JVC make memory foam in-ears, they block a lot of noise (and are cheap) those and rain/wind noise are my salvation in an open office.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#466

Post by thefz »

734129837261 wrote: post #67

My biggest triggers are people who eat crunchy food with open mouths; people who slurp their drinks; people who are oblivious to their environment and sing loudly in open offices. Colleagues next to me eating hard carrots, chips, anything crunchy. Or Chinese expats who slurp their soup and coffee (normal in their culture; rude in mine)... it drove me crazy. The singing one drove me insane at my last job. An office la…

I recently escaped a situation sort of like the one you describe.

5 desk smallish office, we had one coworker who already has a very high natural voice volume and tone, who could not be stopped from having all sorts of personal calls while at the desk.

Boss would do nothing (but was closing his office door not to hear him) since he was a pathological submissive introvert.

We asked politely to at least leave the room. We asked not so politely. We had the office manager come and talk to him, the quiet would last two or three days and then it will all start again.

Calling his spouse, calling his kids and doing homework with them at the phone, calling his parents, mechanic, house renovator and whatnot.

We started counting and averaged around 7 calls a day, which we could not avoid to hear.

In 2018 the total was around 1800 calls.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#467

Post by growlist »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #116

One compounding problem is that (in my experience) we haven't worked out socially acceptable ways to negotiate noise levels in offices. I.e., it's not always clear what the standard is that everybody is expected to meet, and there's no risk-free way of asking somebody to be quieter. And so, in addition to anger at the noise itself, we also have a recipe for simmering resentment and impotent rage.

It's the job of the organisation to tackle this via policy - I've worked at companies where the policy is that if a conversation is anything more than a few exchanges, it should be taken to a meeting room, and everyone is required by policy to point out to others if they've forgotten the policy and strayed into a long open conversation by mistake. It worked well. Same company had a rule about holding onto the handrail when using stairs, and not walking with drinks that don't have a lid on. And everyone is expected to point that out when others do it too. When everyone buys in it works well, and people thank you when you do point out that they aren't following policy. I'm normally pretty juvenile and rebellious to rules like this, but when it's done sensibly and sensitively - and when the benefits of following the rules are obvious - even I will conform without complaint.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#468

Post by growlist »

sneak wrote: post #33

After living in Europe for some years now, I find whenever I am back in the US, it is really irritating (not misophonia-level, more just a "what the fuck are you thinking") how unnecessarily loud everyone seems to be by default in the US. Seems common that people are speaking easily twice as loud as is necessary to accomplish the communication required. Lower your voice.

My pet hate is technical videos in nasally valley-speak: excessive vocal fry, dramatic pauses, and glottal stops. I literally cannot listen to them and have to go to other sources.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#469

Post by L_Rahman »

dijit wrote: post #462
baroffoos wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hammer away at a cherry blue keyboard at work. No one has complained so far but I suspect it is because I have been here for longer than them.

It's actually a worry of mine that I'm very annoying to those around me in my open office and people are too polite or see me as too intimidating to say anything about it. I can either be the asshole who doesn't care, and subsequently be freed from my anxiety, or live in anxiety but at least not be as much of an asshole.

I also carry a mechanical keyboard around, and one of the ways I deal with this is to type for a few minutes and then sent out a message on the office chat to ask if it's bothering anyone and emphasizing that I'll stop if it's even the slightest bit annoying.

Most of the time people tell me they didn't even realize I was typing with a non-standard keyboard.

Re: Office noise bothers some people more than others

#470

Post by ukyrgf »

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…

A person at my work has developed a nose whistle whenever they inhale sharply to clear their nose. Sounds like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. At first it was sparse and everyone kinda looked around like "hey get that booger out of your nose", but now they seem to have embraced it and walk around tooting their nose 5 times a minute.
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