How Do You Drown Out the Office Noise?

An anonymous reader asks: "We've recently had yet another office re-organization, which is not so bad in itself, but the noise level has increased significantly due to the type of furniture as well as job functions of those whom I share the office with. The first thing I think I'm going to do is to get a pair of noise canceling headphones, but before I spend hundreds of dollars I'd like to hear some opinions or alternatives. Two of the ones that look neat are the Extreme Isolation Headphones and Plane Quiet Headphones. What have others done to cope with noise level?"

Comments

For me it's a non-issue:

[TeleoMan]

Since my constant flood of profanity drowns out most everything where I work.

I only wish I were joking.

Re:For me it's a non-issue:

[robertc5]

Yor local gunshop should have a variety of noise-abatement devices at reasonable prices.

regular old headphones

[pizza_milkshake]

a decent old pair of headphones and shoutcast. no noise cancellation. no blinking lights. no frequency-hopping reverse polarization. no iPod. the music is non-GPL and non-BSD compliant. the headphones were not Free. they don't even run linux.

Re:regular old headphones

[Stevyn]

I second that. Over my summer office job, I had one headphone over one ear listening to Howard Stern so I could hear the secretary yell "Where's your fucking time sheet?"

Strategy: Escalation

[RedHat Rocky]

Begin the arms race, expand your noise-making capacity and take the fight to your cube mates.

Remember, in the cubes everyone can hear you scream.

Re:Strategy: Escalation

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother!

I happen to work for a speaker company and I have found the best way to drown out my co-workers is to have a more powerful speaker setup than they do.

Furniture Noise?

[StarWynd]

the noise level has increased significantly due to the type of furniture

My office furniture doesn't make any noise as far as I can tell. Of course I'm not lucky enough to have my "wastebasket vibrate with happiness when trash is thrown into it ."

Headphones? How about keyboards?

[John_Booty]

Blocking out noise is easy. I just do a lot of typing on my IBM Model-M keyboard. I can't even hear myself talk over the satisfying clickity-clack of the keys, much less anything else.

This only becomes a problem when I don't hear the fire alarms, but that's an edge scenario.

simple

[justforaday]

I just hum along to my tinnitus...