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.
Thankfully the people who come to work sick and the office culture that promotes sick people coming to work are blameless.
There are people who seem to think that door slams, loud racking sounds of turned door knobs and juicy Ka-chunks of door latches engaging are just fine in a scholarly/academic office environment.
The main floor of our Engineering Library has a door that is going "Rack! Ka-chunk" a couple times a minute from persons passing through to other floors, all day long.
Spent 2 full days in a conference room with colleagues from numerous other institutions working on behalf of a Federal agency in Arlington, VA.
Not one door slam the entire time. Do the Federal agency people know something about concentrating on work that state universities do not?
When I came to the USA 15 years ago (from the UK), I was amazed at the ubiquity of cube farms everywhere.
As far as I can tell, its actually only management that like cube farms (or presumably more accurately, the $$$$ saved). Nearly all the residents actually would much prefer single offices and the associated peace and quiet that allows you to concentrate and be more productive, yet the myth stubbornly persists that cubes are the "popular choice".
"This does not bode well for some workers facing cold and flu season, when hacking coughs make the rounds."
The rest of the civilized world has solved this problem, it's called paid sick leave.
The popularity of these among upper management is typically because of cost or control reasons. They're much cheaper than closed offices, and management can walk by to see exactly what you're doing. Typical penny wise & pound foolish mentality. The constant interruptions that occur end up costing them much more in the long run. And if this is how they think they need to see what people are doing, they fail at being managers. It's simple enough to give people tasks with milestones, and monitor their progress. I'm fortunate in that I'm able to work from home periodically. I get much more accomplished there because the only interruptions are from the phone or the doorbell. That said, I don't want to give up the face to face discussions that happen in the break room and hallways at work.
Just another day in Paradise
Sounds — and smells — like a startup.
These are by far my worst favorite. I keep hearing the voice of my mother yelling "chew with your mouth closed!" It's never a problem at lunch or wherever expected. At my desk? Why do I need to HEAR people eat? I've had several colleagues over the years carbureting their food with open mouths, with chunks falling out onto the floor. I recently had to sit next to one guy that would make sucking sounds as he'd suck his fingers clean several times during his snacks, which were constant. Vegetarians & vegans need to eat quite regularly. The clanking of spoons on porcelain bowls. The resonance of hollow skulls munching on granola. The mushy sounds. My tolerance is about five minutes. Annoyance sets in at ten. Aggravation at fifteen. Psychosis at thirty. The last job... I took a lot of walks. This one guy would load up a bowl of snacks and proceed to noisily eat them for two hours slowly, savoring every bite and letting us all know. Without headphones, I would be in jail from my murderous rampage. I'm trying to grasp fifteen concepts in a head that can, at best, hold seven at once. The repetitious unnecessary noise of gluttony is a distraction.
Cube farms were a step up from the open offices of the 50's/60's. Then the hipsters decided that cubes were bad and that open offices were the way to go. But the irony is that they are now discovering what was learnt in the 60's. From Cubicle
Propst concluded from his studies that during the 20th Century the office environment had changed substantially, particularly in relation to the amount of information being processed.[1][2] The amount of information an employee had to analyze, organize, and maintain had increased dramatically. Despite this, the basic layout of the corporate office had remained largely unchanged, with employees sitting behind rows of traditional desks in a large open room, devoid of privacy. Propst's studies suggested that an open environment actually reduced communication between employees, and impeded personal initiative.[1][2] On this, Propst commented "One of the regrettable conditions of present day offices is the tendency to provide a formula kind of sameness for everyone."[1][2] In addition, the employees' bodies were suffering from long hours of sitting in one position. Propst concluded that office workers require both privacy and interaction, depending on which of their many duties they were performing.
It's sad that the wheel keeps being reinvented.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Cube farms are going away. The current trend in open floor plans is desks with no partitions at all. HR says it's because millennials like it and all the "cool" tech companies have them. More likely it is cheaper than cubes and it is easier to watch everyone. It is really distracting to catch all the movement in your peripheral vision but its not like anyone in leadership cares what their employees think
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 /.
How things have changed. In the 90's I went to a startup (sw) and we had offices, all of us. The company we left had switched from offices to cubicles. And in keeping with true PHB mentality, the prior company had taken a poll if we wanted to stay in offices or switch to cubes. They pinky-swear promised they would do what the employees wanted. Of course the employees overwhelmingly voted for offices and when the results came in, the PHB's said we "know" you really wanted cubes, soo they went to cubes.
Where I work there's a guy sitting about 2 metres away who grinds his teeth. Constantly. Every single day. Have you ever heard the phrase "familiarity breeds contempt"? This is a perfect example. The sound is not unlike the creaking sound an old wooden chair makes when you sit in it.
Then there's the guy who purposely sneezes as loud as he possibly can for reasons only he knows.
Now, one of them makes noise without realising it and stops when he's asked to (briefly) but the other...
Working every day with either of them is bound to make any sane person pissed off.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I find that normal speaking volume tends to be inversely proportional to intelligence.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
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."
You have to realise that there are some people who over the years have gone or are going completely nuts working in an office 9-5, Monday to Friday. Given mortgage, bills, car and other completely idiotic responsibilities we've unfortunately taken on, the choices are (1) make quacking noises at desk or (2) take the rope you keep on top of your wardrobe, tie it around a beam in your garage, put the other end around your neck and jump off a chair.
I am one of those people.
Thank you for your understanding.
In the bay area, I'd bet heavily that this is not true, even despite the huge cost of land there. A typical worker's desk is about 2 meters wide, and they need a bunch of space behind them to wheel back into, so lets go with 2.4m x 2.0m - this is conveniently the standard "minimum" area a worker should be allowed as defined by the HSE in the UK. Compare that against an office, plenty I've seen have been of the order of 3.5m square for two people sitting in opposite corners. Lets call it 4m square to account for walls and doors etc (probably an overestimation)
So then, we're talking about 4.8 square meters for a worker in open plan, and 8 square meters for a worker in an office. In the bay area, office space leasing costs about $500 per square meter per year, so you're looking at $1,600 per year overhead for putting workers in 2 man offices vs open plan.
A typical bay area engineer salary is of the order of $160,000 a year (plus bonuses etc). For seniors, more than that even. That means you only need to make a worker 1% more efficient by sticking them in an office for it to pay off. The reduction in sick days (if you can cut out 2 sick days a year, you've made them 1% more efficient) alone accounts for that. Add their increased happiness, and productivity, and it's very very likely to be a huge win sticking people in offices.