Slashdot Mirror
Noisy Coworkers And Other Sounds Are Top Distraction in Workplace, Study Says (npr.org)
Sounds, especially those made by other humans, have ranked as the top distraction in the workplace, according to design expert Alan Hedge of Cornell. A staggering 74 percent of workers say they face "many" instances of disturbances and distractions from noise. Hedge says the noise is generally coming from another person, though it's much more disturbing when it's a machine that is making it. NPR reports: The popularity of open offices has exacerbated the problem. The University of California's Center for the Built Environment has a study showing workers are happier when they are in enclosed offices and less likely to take sick days. This does not bode well for some workers facing cold and flu season, when hacking coughs make the rounds. [...] Rue Dooley, an adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management, says HR professionals often call in, asking how to manage co-worker complaints about various bodily noises.
Sounds — and smells — like a startup.
Worker: doing any actual work here is difficult with all the noise..
Boss: well, I manage just fine
Worker: I said actual work
I do my job amazingly. In fact, I'm not paid accordingly. You should adjust my pay upward by about a fifth to a third annually.
Thanks.
And this, of course, applies to everyone but management, who naturally "must" have their individual offices.
...is /.
If Open office is responsible for flu and colds, I'm glad I switched to LibreOffice!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
When I started my first "real" job there was a guy on my intake who after a couple of months got transferred to some esoteric team. When I asked how it was going he said it was OK, apart from the guy who constantly quacked.
I thought he was taking the piss. I went round there a few days later (you couldn't just walk in; it was semi-secure but I found an excuse) and it was totally true.
I caught up with him ten years later. He was still there. I didn't ask whether he got used to it or just strangled the loonbag.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is an old Klingon proverb.
Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.
This space unintentionally left blank.