We added ten people without hiring anyone.

October 28, 2017 12:31 PM

How do you solve a noise problem in an open floor plan?

"The iOS app is tiny: it uses the Apple AVAudioRecorder class’s level-metering to passively collect and report average and maximum ambient decibel levels every 10 seconds to our server monitoring tool Datadog. We’ve open-sourced our Decibel noise-recording app for you to use. "

via StudyHacks.

posted by storybored (71 comments total)

I work in an open plan office and get very distracted by the noise just from the five people sitting around me. One sneezes a lot, one hums, one whistles, one uses a noisy mouse wheel, and one occasionally curses to herself. I’m sure they’re all annoyed by me too, most likely when I gulp down soda while I work. While I wait for every open plan office everywhere to be redesigned, I’ve invested in a set of in-ear earplugs.
posted by ejs at 12:52 PM on October 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

Wait, I'm not sure I understand - aren't the original noise level "zones" mostly determined by the people working in those areas? They don't talk about any architectural features of the office that might make a difference, so this sounds like a case of "we put all the loud people with the loud people, and the quiet people with the quiet people! Success!"

A couple years ago I actually spent my summer doing acoustical measurements in various open plan offices for a research project. At least once a day, someone would see me walking around with my clip board and sound level meter, and come up to me all "oh you're here to do something about the acoustics THANK GOD". I didn't have the heart to tell them that I didn't have the power to do anything, and even if I did, well, the literature basically says that there's no good substitute yet for actual fucking walls.
posted by btfreek at 12:57 PM on October 28, 2017 [28 favorites]

I think the idea was, put the quiet people far away from the loud people, which probably helped the quiet people.

(Oh and I meant in-ear headphones in my earlier comment but missed the edit window)
posted by ejs at 1:04 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

But I mean.. you could do that just with your office floor plan and list of "quiet" and "loud" departments (and per TFA they just made assumptions about which were which instead of, for instance, examining the noise data to try and find patterns). I guess I'm just a bit disappointed that they have this interesting (/potentially super creepy) data source and don't actually do anything with it.
posted by btfreek at 1:12 PM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I work in a cube farm (a small one, there are no zones or floors or areas, just one room with cubicles, there is nowhere to go). The sound situation (not talking, it's all the other incidental sentient biological entity noises like horking snot and belching) makes me want to cry on the regs. I don't think there's any solution to that other than some goddamn doors and walls.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:15 PM on October 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

I solve this problem by always being the noisiest one.
posted by chavenet at 1:17 PM on October 28, 2017 [16 favorites]

Heh: the contrast between the light-airy-plants-comfy-chairs-cat-cushions photo and the reality of the rows-of-desks-crammed-together floorplan. That blue circle was carefully chosen.

And yes of course move sales and marketing away from engineering: those people are on their damn phones -- or worse, their damn speakerphones -- all the time.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 1:25 PM on October 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

I see your open plan office, and raise a unicomp model-m clone keyboard.

I've had the director of tech services ask me to take a break when they've had a phone call.

Oh, and fireproof acoustical panels 2x4 cost like 25 bucks.... That would help.
posted by mikelieman at 1:28 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

They put in white noise generators where I work, it seems to help. You can solve it by raising the ambient noise floor as well as by putting the salespeople out on an ice floe.
posted by jenkinsEar at 1:29 PM on October 28, 2017 [29 favorites]

These tech bros are ridiculous, the obvious solution is to steal your staff's voices like Ursula the sea witch.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:30 PM on October 28, 2017 [50 favorites]

I see your open plan office, and raise a unicomp model-m clone keyboard.

Read'em and weep; I once worked in a cubicle farm where one co-worker was afflicted with Tourette's. Not kidding, unfortunately.

(I'm not saying that they shouldn't have hired the person, just that they should have been a bit more proactive about accommodating them, such as allocating an office)

For the most part, I have survived open offices or veal pens through the deployment of good headphones and interesting music. I have great headphones that were close to $300 new, but if you divide the cost by the hours a day I can wear them and shut the office out, it works out to pennies an hour.

No, you cannot have sales or support people in close proximity to programmers and developers. It leads to madness and/or staff turnover.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:43 PM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Ursula the sea witch Is your answer for everything, poffin boffin.
posted by Artw at 1:52 PM on October 28, 2017 [18 favorites]

Break up as many flat surfaces as you can. Think plants, blankets, and as much egg crate as you can get your hands on.
posted by Sphinx at 2:03 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Or, and this is just a thought, you could give people small offices.
posted by Talez at 2:09 PM on October 28, 2017 [32 favorites]

I've been hitting myself in the head with a hammer for four years but I have a complex plan involving pressure sensors to find out why I have a headache all the time. Wish me luck!
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:11 PM on October 28, 2017 [45 favorites]

I'm currently fortunate enough to be able to solve the problem by working at home. But I've worked in enough cube farms to feel everyone's justified pain.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:21 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've been hitting myself in the head with a hammer for four years but I have a complex plan involving pressure sensors to find out why I have a headache all the time. Wish me luck!

After exhaustive study we’ve discovered that hitting your head with the side of the hammer will distribute the energy over a wider area, reducing the maximum pressure to any particular point. I suggest you try that.
posted by D.C. at 2:24 PM on October 28, 2017 [16 favorites]

My current employer: "so turns out most of our staff are introverts. Also, we're moving to a total open plan solution! It'll be really modern and great!"

I am intensely envious of those of you who can wear headphones; I've been explicitly told not to by my manager, so I can be engaged with the rest of the team (luckily she's on maternity leave at the moment and we are mostly ignoring that rule, but it's going to be fun when she gets back).
posted by Pink Frost at 2:24 PM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

Open floor plan offices are one of the top reasons I’m only interested in remote work positions these days.
posted by Cogito at 2:25 PM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Is there an app where a phone with an audible ringtone explodes on the third or fourth ring? Because they should install that app.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:28 PM on October 28, 2017 [10 favorites]

Seconding ejs on earplugs. They come in big jars, they’re disposable, and they’re probably totally not environmentally destructive maybe.

I can’t listen to music when I work, because it commands my attention. I sometimes envy people who can treat music as a background sound. I have no conception of how they do that. It’s narrative. How do you mentally attenuate the effect of narrative sensory input without taxing your concentration powers even more? Like I said, a mystery to me, but a neat power many people seem to claim to have.

Earplugs, baby. Sweet relief.
posted by Construction Concern at 2:40 PM on October 28, 2017 [12 favorites]

I work in an open plan office. When I went in, I was originally worried about people looking at my screen—years of working with customer data made me very nervous about that. However, the absolute worst thing is people's choice of music on the office stereo.

I keep threatening to make a loud-disruption cost calculator to demonstrate just how annoying it is when people insist on playing the same goddamn song at ridiculous volumes every morning. (I am looking in the direction of my boss here.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 3:01 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I spend my day alternating between resenting the sound situation in my open-plan office, and contributing to it. There is something ego-boosting about knowing your colleagues are overhearing your conversations, whether they be highly technical or hilarious.

I don't like wearing headphones because inevitably I get people calling across desks 10 times a day to ask me questions, and I end up straining my ears through the music with every little sound, to see if it was someone calling my name. Opposite of relaxing. Sure, I could wait till they walk up behind me and tap me on the shoulder, but anticipating that also stresses me out. Sure, I could have a different personality, but then I probably wouldn't have the technical skills my employer values me for. So the thing that gives is my productivity.

Don't even get me started on the visual pollution of open-plan offices, from horrible fluorescent lights you're not in control of, to distracting movements in all corners of your eyes, at all hours of the work day.
posted by mantecol at 3:08 PM on October 28, 2017 [12 favorites]

I am a construction manager, at the moment my time is split about 50/50 between site and an open plan office. I need my phone to be very loudly audible. It rings a lot. I use it a lot and am generally yelling at tradespeople who are often in noisy places. I am basically the reason open plan offices are the pits. I'm sorry.
posted by deadwax at 3:09 PM on October 28, 2017 [16 favorites]

I was at work the other day literally thinking we need to make the office into "quiet" and "loud" spaces and then people can self-segregrate as needed.
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:11 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not to be all Pepsi blue, but my employer very kindly got everyone very fancy Bose noise canceling headphones, and it makes a world of difference. Throw on a bit of music or something to raise the noise floor, and I'm able to concentrate and be productive in our open office plan.

I swear by these things, but we also have a company culture of headphones on = no bothering them irl.
posted by fragmede at 3:13 PM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just before the company I worked for got bought (which derailed everything), I'd finally gotten the head of the department I worked for to acknowledge the noise problem and grant a budget for executing a solution. The environment was not owned by the company -- the building management controlled the floorplan, so we couldn't change that -- but I was in the process of claiming a large unused area, surrounding it with sound-absorbing walls higher than the surrounding cubicle walls, and filling it with non-symmetrically-placed desks and comfy soft furniture as a "quiet" area where people could go when they wanted to get away from the noisy folks. Which is not to say its a solution, but you have to try whatever you can, because nothing kills morale quite like people being really frustrated by things that on the surface seem too trivial to complain about.
posted by davejay at 3:26 PM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I sometimes envy people who can treat music as a background sound. I have no conception of how they do that.

It’s fascinating to me how differently different peoples’ brains work. Music is almost always background noise for me - I have to concentrate and really focus to hear the lyrics, and even then I often end up accidentally tuning them out. My wife is always surprised when I don’t know the lyrics to a song I’ve heard over and over, while I’m always surprised when she does know the lyrics to something she’s only heard a couple times!

I’m not sure if it’s more of a music thing or an auditory vs visual thing - if I’m listening to a podcast or watching TV and start reading something, I almost inevitably end up paying attention to what I’m looking at and stop comprehending what I’m listening to. I also absorb information much better when I can read it instead of hearing it.
posted by insectosaurus at 3:42 PM on October 28, 2017 [12 favorites]

'We couldn't focus so badly that instead of just asking people if they wanted to move to the obviously quieter part of the office, we got super ADD and spent billable hours building a fucking app that could have told us what the security guard already knew had we asked him.'

This is so disgustingly techBro. I bet next time they'll be like 'we wanted to know if people were chilly in our office, so instead of asking them...we built an app and came to the conclusion that some people are chilly! We turned the AC down and now it's like we've hired 20 people because focus lol!'

I used to work for a company like this. With an open floor plan. I hate all of it and it should burn.
posted by jnnla at 3:44 PM on October 28, 2017 [22 favorites]

My office layout is generally good for noise reduction, but a few bad actors can work around that. We have someone who whistles despite having been told that's a bad idea and someone who about once a month decides to recap the entire plot of whatever the latest movies and tv shows are. I had to buy my own noise cancelling headphones.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:54 PM on October 28, 2017

Shortly before my arrival, they took down most of the walls between cubicles because they wanted us to work more together, and now there's a problem with noise. Gee, I wonder where that came from. In general, we have an office culture where nobody will ever text me to discuss stuff no matter how many times I say I prefer that--the other day I had an awful cold and was working from home and someone still insisted on actually phoning me to discuss something that I was trying to have a Skype conversation about. It isn't even generational; that person was under 30. Some individual people are loud, but it's easy for a set of norms about communication to make it impossible to just heads-down with headphones or earplugs even if you want to.
posted by Sequence at 4:02 PM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

'We couldn't focus so badly that instead of just asking people if they wanted to move to the obviously quieter part of the office, we got super ADD and spent billable hours building a fucking app that could have told us what the security guard already knew had we asked him.'

This is so disgustingly techBro. I bet next time they'll be like 'we wanted to know if people were chilly in our office, so instead of asking them...we built an app and came to the conclusion that some people are chilly! We turned the AC down and now it's like we've hired 20 people because focus lol!'

I used to work for a company like this. With an open floor plan. I hate all of it and it should burn.

I want to defend the author out of principle, because I think it's laudable and not at all stupid to tinker with software to measure things you are curious about. But I have to admit that either all the other parts were stupid, or they wrote about them in a really unfortunately stupid-sounding way.
posted by value of information at 4:33 PM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I can’t listen to music when I work, because it commands my attention.

It's a matter of picking the right music. Opera or Classical won't do, nor folk music.

I tend to find a single track (usually pop music) and put it on replay. I played Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" 171 times in 3 days once.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 4:52 PM on October 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

All you people who can't wear headphones because you're expected to answer people yelling across 8 cubicles at random intervals: this is what Slack is for! I Slack people sitting right next to me multiple times a day.

I do phone support pretty regularly, but my headphones have a mic and my phone is Skype, so I just leave em on. They don't drown out the gross horking and ridiculously loud nose blowing, though. My office sounds like a TB ward at all times for some reason.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:04 PM on October 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

Also, Philip Glass is awesome for work.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:06 PM on October 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

Oh, and fireproof acoustical panels 2x4 cost like 25 bucks.... That would help.

Buy several. Put a three-sided enclosure around the sides of your chair and behind, add a roof.

Presto, fired quiet!
posted by BlueHorse at 5:13 PM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I played Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" 171 times in 3 days once

Please tell me you were working from home, or wearing headphones. Barring that, I would like to know how you are posting to Metafilter from the afterlife following your inevitable murder at the hands of your coworkers.
posted by btfreek at 5:24 PM on October 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

I did manage to get an office of my own once when I worked in PR simply by calling into our meetings. I sat with all the producers who were trying to get stuff done and I'd have my feet up like "WHAT ABOUT DANCING GIRLS? CAN WE GET DANCING GIRLS AT THIS PARTY? WELL OF COURSE IT HAS TO BE AN OPEN BAR, GOD, WE WANT THEM GOOD AND DRUNK SO THEY WRITE NICE THINGS ABOUT IT."

Shared office with one other person occurred after a week of this.

No regrets.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 5:38 PM on October 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

we have an office culture where nobody will ever text me to discuss stuff no matter how many times I say I prefer that

That would be me. I do not like talking on the phone, but damn if I'm going to have a text conversation on a phone. If it goes beyond one short text and one reply I'm calling back.
posted by bongo_x at 6:02 PM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Ursula the sea witch Is your answer for everything, poffin boffin.

Ursula is like a multitool with tentacles on the bottom. She’s very versatile.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:16 PM on October 28, 2017 [7 favorites]

Please tell me you were working from home, or wearing headphones.

Headphones. If I have the speakers turned on it's going to be Stimmhorn all the way.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:25 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was at work the other day literally thinking we need to make the office into "quiet" and "loud" spaces and then people can self-segregrate as needed.

you'd think this would be an excellent plan, bc you are a sane and decent human being. however! the actual way this plan works out is that the loudest most self centered asshole in the office decides that the "quiet" area is the place where he should go to sit for 2 hours on a conference call ON SPEAKERPHONE BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS TO HEAR 5 OLD WHITE MEN YELLING AT ONCE IT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT EVERYONE HEARS THE 2 HOURS OF YELLING and they're not even arguing they just all like to shout over each other constantly without ever stopping it's so great

yes this was 5 years ago and yes i am still angry and yes i will remain so until my death, good day
posted by poffin boffin at 8:05 PM on October 28, 2017 [23 favorites]

in conclusion, SEA WITCH
posted by poffin boffin at 8:06 PM on October 28, 2017 [11 favorites]

He doesn't want any distraction from his conference call, poffin boffin.

My personal Waterloo was all the people in my last office who called into the same regular conference call on speakerphone. The conference system added about a half second delay, so I could hear each person in turn speaking loudly and clearly enough for their phones to pick them up, and then the amplified, slightly out of phase version coming from everybody else's phones.
posted by fedward at 8:31 PM on October 28, 2017 [10 favorites]

My personal Waterloo was all the people in my last office who called into the same regular conference call on speakerphone.

Hell, My colleague puts on a fucking headset, and cranks it so high I can hear it 10 feet away.
posted by mikelieman at 9:48 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Maybe they're trying to drown you out.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:33 PM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

open floor plans are a plague. pay some carpenters already.
posted by eustatic at 11:39 PM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I work in an open office. The company crams as many people into a room as they can without violating fire codes. This sometimes leaves us with all valid desk arrangements being exceedingly uncomfortable, like one guy has to have his back to a busy hallway and everyone walking by can read his screen, or you wind up in a long row of desks and have to scoot by three people on your way out of the room.

And it's really not so much about decibels as it is about content. There was another article floating around last week on HN, "Why you can get work done in a busy cafe but not in your open office" or somesuch. Its kind-of-obvious premise was that it's super distracting to be within earshot of conversations that are relevant to you because your brain is trying to pay attention, but irrelevant conversations can be tuned out effectively.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 12:26 AM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]

Am bear, we call open plan offices "Pick'n'Mix". Good times.
posted by fallingbadgers at 12:56 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Its kind-of-obvious premise was that it's super distracting to be within earshot of conversations that are relevant to you because your brain is trying to pay attention, but irrelevant conversations can be tuned out effectively.

That is precisely why I can focus on work on the subway, but have a harder time of it at work sometimes. Some rando shouting about Jesus on the subway is not relevant to me. My coworker talking about some new feature that involves my department is absolutely relevant, and pulls me out of my work.
posted by XtinaS at 5:31 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you people think an open-plan office is noise hell you should try working in a small room filled with 30 ninth-graders who really don't want to be there because it's the last period of the day and the weather is nice outside and also they give no fucks about The Odyssey no matter how many times you point out that Odysseus is a huge dick who spends all his time killing dudes (and monsters); blaming his own dudes for getting killed; and shacking up with hot nymphs and sorceresses while crying about how much he misses his wife.
posted by dersins at 7:30 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]

I just scream and scream and scream all day.
posted by kyrademon at 7:31 AM on October 29, 2017 [4 favorites]

Or, and this is just a thought, you could give people small offices

We recently made the move from small offices to open plan, and the official explanation quickly moved from "innovation!" to "This was the cheapest option." We're not getting offices back.

Me, I protest by cracking pistachios at my desk.

But yeah, $70 Sennheiser over-ear headphones, white noise generators, quiet spaces are the only solution. My least favorite part is I absolutely hate the idea of other people hearing my phone conversations. Thank god we have call rooms.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:40 AM on October 29, 2017

But I don't want to try that. I don't want noise hell for anybody.
posted by XtinaS at 7:48 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

If I have the speakers turned on it's going to be Stimmhorn all the way.

Should mix nicely with a bit of Batzorig Vaanchig from my cube and the graphics guy's relentless harpsichord recordings.
posted by flabdablet at 7:58 AM on October 29, 2017

My open plan experience has rows of gear making machines in it, most of them off, but any one of them can be heard across the 25,000 sq foot floorspace. Three 1/2 people share this space (my boss spends 1/2 of his time in his office), I can go for hours with out having a co-worker talk to me.... I feel sorry for the rest of you.
posted by MikeWarot at 8:01 AM on October 29, 2017

I can’t listen to music when I work, because it commands my attention. I sometimes envy people who can treat music as a background sound. I have no conception of how they do that. It’s narrative. How do you mentally attenuate the effect of narrative sensory input without taxing your concentration powers even more?

All I can say is that for me, the music enjoyment, and getting work done (my work is software) happen in two different parts of the brain, and that they are complementary - the right music enhances my concentration, and the work helps me enjoy the music more. It puts me in 'the Zone', or creates 'flow'. Or something like that.

At most workplaces, headphones were the 'do not disturb' sign, and we also did a lot with Slack.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:40 AM on October 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

For myself re music, I can't listen to music with a story, because I'll listen for the story. Techno, however, is fair game.
posted by XtinaS at 8:48 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

I got lucky with my current job. My office is aaaalllll the way at the top of the building three floors up, and aaaaaalllll the way at the end of the hall. We get maybe two people a day in there asking questions (and even then it's usually the same guy twice).

Better yet, the office is small enough that it's just me and my coworker/boss in there. We're at opposite ends of the room, separated by about fifteen feet, two desks, four monitors, and a couple of semi-out-of-control houseplants. I have a window right next to my desk and a view of a small courtyard with tons of trees outside. It's all kind of awesome, really.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:09 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

All you people who can't wear headphones because you're expected to answer people yelling across 8 cubicles at random intervals: this is what Slack is for!

I can't agree with this enough. There are huge problems with open-floor-plan workplaces, but this is a problem with communication and expectations. Replacing yelling with Slack can be a big help. On top of that would be learning that you shouldn't insist on someone else's immediate attention.

Personally, I work remotely and usually do it from my home office. Since I do have meetings and pairing at various times during the day and sometimes want to be in other places, I exercised some basic human decency and got myself a pair of headphones with a boom mic. It makes me think I look like a dip when I'm out and working, but it's much better than the alternative for my colleagues (because they hear just me and not the rest of what's going on around me) and for people around me (because I can talk pretty quietly and the mic picks it up well).

I did screw up a bit, since the headphones are on-ear ones. This means when I'm in a loud place, I can still hear a lot of distractions. Maybe it's time to look for a different model.
posted by cardioid at 9:10 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

I work at a kennel with an open floorplan. You folks have no idea. The dull roar of the lawnmower is my respite. Also: one of my charges bit me and I had to go to the hospital and get shots and get a safety lecture. I never thought I would miss offices, but there you go. I still don't miss marketing types, however, at least there's some evolutionary reason that the Jack Russels go on and on and on...

Put me on team sea witch, I'm pretty sure she can just shed limbs that get bitten and grow another one.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 9:12 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

I can't remember where I first heard this, but it's been estimated that in some types of work like software development, every interruption can 'cost' 15 min of of productive effort. I often have difficulty getting started and concentrating, and I am easily distracted, so it's especially true for me.

("Get off the Blue and back to work!!" "Just a sec...")
posted by Artful Codger at 9:18 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's true. Getting back to flow state in programming takes anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Which is why disruption is such a pain in the ass. "Oh, you just wanted me to spell a word for you? There you go, now to recapture my thoughts for the next half hour."
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:24 AM on October 29, 2017 [5 favorites]

Software development can be a bit like constructing a Rube Goldberg machine in your head. You have a lot of delicate state to keep track of ("...and then the bowling ball rolls off the track, landing on the scissors which cut the string and release the balloon...."), and anything that disrupts that can mean starting all over getting your head back to the place where you can make meaningful additions or changes. Like an extra row of dominoes or subbing some bellows for the electric fan or...what was I talking about again?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 9:26 AM on October 29, 2017 [8 favorites]

My favorite analogy, in my few years as a programmer, was keeping multiple plates spinning. One lapse in focus, one phone call, they all come tumbling down and it takes time to set them all back up again.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:39 AM on October 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I was really hoping to hear more about the role of the acoustics of the space! Because I work in a "cube farm"-style office and...I don't find ambient noise to be a problem. It's definitely true that people are chattier when they arrive in the morning, but once people are settled in, I only get distracted by noise when people are standing directly in front of my cube talking. I really want to know if it has to do with space design, as opposed to team dynamics.
posted by capricorn at 3:04 PM on October 29, 2017

someone who whistles despite having been told that's a bad idea and someone who about once a month decides to recap the entire plot of whatever the latest movies and tv shows are.

I had to buy my own noise cancelling headphones.

How's that working out, tofu_crouton? What brand? I thought they were great for steady sounds like road and airplane noise, but with talking not so good, or even not at all.
posted by Rash at 3:15 PM on October 29, 2017

The company I work at went from individual offices to cubes a few years ago. I work in the IT room, so you get used to a certain amount of background noise, banter, arguments and people gopher-popping up to shout a question across the room. That's why "what happens in the IT room, stays in the IT room."

But when a VP asked if it made people more collaborative out in The World I told him, "I think it just mostly makes people grumpy because they have to hold in their farts."
posted by Cyrano at 3:23 PM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Every couple of months I go to talk to one of our HR staff about the miseries of our open office noise problems. I preface all of these conversations with "I know you can't do anything about any of this because people refuse to change" and I end them with "thank you for letting me vent, I know you can't actually do anything."

See, HR is good for something other than protecting the company's bottom line! They can tut sympathetically when you tell them about the coworker who has been yelling at people about the renovations for their condo for two hours, and the other coworker who listens to music without headphones and SINGS ALONG ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 7:21 AM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

How's that working out, tofu_crouton? What brand?

Not well as I currently have battery corrosion in them. The brand is "Creative", which was cheap on Amazon at the time.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:38 AM on October 30, 2017

I'm a little surprised to hear about open-plan offices where people go about blasting music, etc. Even with actual offices, I feel that it would be considered impolite at my workplace to blast music from speakers rather than using headphones. Certainly there was music-blasting when I worked at a book warehouse, but the only thing there was to concentrate on there was "is this the right book y/n" and suchlike. I don't think it would have been the done thing to blast music in the upstairs offices (aka "website stuff and business calls" zone) either.
posted by inconstant at 11:09 AM on October 30, 2017 [1 favorite]