*HHGGGRRRRNNNNGNGGGGGHHHH* *BLLLLEEEAAAAARRRRGGHHHH*!!!!!!!!!

[Jack]

I hadn't noticed whether people were inherently less considerate overall when they were in cubicles.

Thinking an open office inspires people to at least look busy, and that means they're probably also more quiet. Notice now it's much less common to walk up to someone and find them looking at their phone.

But that's just it. You want the appearance of looking busy which often defeats the purpose. A lot of my work I spend thinking rather than hacking away at the keyboard, but to other people it will look like I'm just staring or drawing faces or browsing distractedly, none of which is what people expect from someone busy working.

I always had a feeling that managers prefer open spaces because they can keep tabs on people.

Have always had jobs which require some level of contemplative screen staring, so sitting quietly staring at a screen with work on it seems sufficient to appearing busy. Though do think it's good an open office makes people more aware of appearances. Those people who frequently show up late, leave early, take long lunches, or don't show up at all, feel more exposed. Although they were probably highly noticed anyway even with walls and quietly ticking off their peers. People are more likely to be in their seats when they're supposed to, and that can ease underlying hostilities. People are less likely to dress like slobs, eat smelly food at their desk, or bring their kids into the office; again underlying hostilities. My boss seems to care about appearances. She doesn't come right out and say it, but have the impression she prefers us in our seats, to avoid work from home days, to take our machines home each day even when on vacation. Am happy to put on whatever appearances she wants me to.

[Jack]

When you are sensitive to certain gross noises, they seem really loud even when not.

It might also be a factor of frequency combined with duration. Someone who coughs or sniffles for a couple of weeks from a cold gets better. Someone who barfs once per day for years is only disruptive once per day. Jack sneezes each day within the first fifteen minutes in the office, but that's it. Will admit the throat tic guy was pretty annoying, but very different than people who are simply inconsiderate.

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

People with gross habits can often break those gross habits if they want to. Or they don't think it's gross. Or they know it's gross and they do it as a kind of "fuck you".

Some people make 10 times more noise on their best day with their throats and sinuses than I do on my worst day of the heaviest cold. There is medication you can take that dries up your sinuses and it works. There's allergy medication that works. There are tissues you can buy, or you can steal a roll of toilet paper. Some people sniff because they don't want to waste any of their Bolivian marching powder (Yes, I have worked with people like that),

Being noisily and obviously sick is also a kind of virtue signalling. A way of letting people know how much of a hero you are for coming to work.

[Jack]

That's hilarious, virtue signalling. Never thought of it that way. Maybe because people complain about sick people at work infecting everyone else. Rarely get sick, so don't personally care either way. The rest seems kind of presumptuous. Some people do have genuine tics and compulsions, and sure some people probably do have bad habits or are simply inconsiderate, but it doesn't seem correct to assume that's all there is to it. It's equally unfair to assume people bothered by it should be able to get over it. Maybe just have never known anyone intentionally gross all the time like that, so it's hard to imagine someone who would be. My throat makes a small squeak when I swallow liquid; there's absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it. Husband says it's not noticeable, and only sounds loud in my head, but honestly don't know if it has ever annoyed anyone else. My jaw also clicks; for years it was unavoidable, but since about thirty my jaw has moved back closer to it's original position, and I have learned to chew in a way which mostly avoids the sound and accompanying pain, but only mostly. Noisy eating and drinking is personally annoying, so it's been a longtime concern of bothering other people. It made me a closet eater, which aids disordered eating of multiple types. Mother is seemingly allergic to the planet, her entire life in a constant state of clogged and often infected regardless the season or climate lived. While medication offers a small level of relief, nothing has ever actually worked. If anyone ever said she has gross habits which she doesn't want or care to break, would definitely tell them fuck you. She'll try anything.

[Pyraxis]

One of the shitty family dynamics I grew up with was the war of my sensory sensitivities against my brother's tics.

Separation is the only thing that works in adulthood. I do think in retrospect that if the family had drastically reduced ambient anxiety (sourced from stuff unrelated to noise and tics), my brain and possibly his might not have gotten so burned into maladaptive coping.

[Gopher Gary]

I just read the first post of this thread. Retching and gagging fits are part of my daily routine, because teeth brushing is a real challenge for me. There's no reason to open the bathroom window, so I don't share that with the neighborhood. It's such a normal thing for me, I don't even usually notice I'm doing it unless someone mentions it. Sugarbutt might say, rough one this morning? I'll say, huh? He'll say, brushing your teeth. I'll say, I didn't notice. He'll say, well it sounded pretty serious.  Fortunately for me, my family finds my sensitive gag reflex hilarious, and they've been known to do things to purposely trigger it. 

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

I used to work with a guy about 23 years ago. His name was Stanley. Funny how I remember his name now.

He had a bit of an issue. He used to grunt, like really loud grunts that reverberated through the office. Constantly. I thought it was funny, it was a gross noise but it didn't "trigger" me like some noises do. But it triggered a few other people. I just found it amazing someone would come to work and sit in their cubicle and grunt like a hog all day. Every day. Initially I didn't know his name, only knew him from the grunting so I started referring to him as "grunter" and the name stuck.

A girl at work had to work with him and she couldn't remember his name, kept almost calling him "grunter" as that had become the poor guy's nickname (never used in his presence) and that was all she knew him as. People asked him why he did it and he said that he always felt like he had something stuck in the back of his throat. Eventually he did stop doing it.


Around the same time I signed up for a Thai cooking course with a friend. It was great, once a week for 2 or 3 months, and we learned how to make some really awesome food. There was a lady attending the course, she was an immigrant who was maybe early middle age. She didn't have to pay for the course or contribute for ingredients, I am not sure if it was a requirement for using the community centre or if someone was paying for her. She was apparently there because a counselor thought she needed some social contact, she felt really disconnected in Australia. You can probably guess how this is going to turn out. Well it became pretty obvious why she had trouble making friends. She would pick her nose when she thought nobody was watching. She would sniffle and wipe her nose with the palm of her hand while she was preparing food. She would cough vigorously as a result of the sniffling and not cover her mouth nor even turn away while she was helping prepare food, just constantly cough and splutter over the food. For the first 2 or 3 weeks the teacher would assign us into groups, and nobody would eat whatever food her group prepared. Seriously. As the course went on the teacher let us form our own groups and each group would block her from working with them. A wall of bodies would magically form if she tried to go near any food. One time I was preparing the broth component of a soup, and I had some stringy stuff that I had to tie into knots and then drop in the soup (it would disintegrate if not tied) while another group prepared some meatballs to go into the soup and other groups prepared other stuff for the meal. The other groups would move around if they saw her come near them and block her from going near their food, and she spotted me working by myself and came over to help me. I felt awful about it but if I let her touch the food I was working on then that was 2 or 3 teams' effort wasted, so I kept my fat arse between her and the food. Considering that she was clearly in a fragile mental state to begin with, I can't imagine the damage done by the way she was treated week after week. But there seems to be this unspoken social rule that no matter how gross someone is, you can't mention it. The soup was awesome, by the way. No unexpected flavours.

I have a friend I have mentioned before. He snorts and wipes his nose with his hand, then wipes his hand on his trousers (leaving a visible snail trail on his trousers if they are dark). He also never washes his hands when he goes to the toilet, not once in the 43 years I have known him. But he really hates that I consider him so gross that I won't shake his hand unless I can cover my hand with something. So he tries to stick his fingers in my mouth. Literally. He knows I could break him in half but he also knows I detest violence so he is safe (ish). That's the thing, people don't like being made to feel as if they are gross. If people make "trigger" noises around me I will look at them, kind of cringe, shudder, furrow my brow, maybe look a bit grossed out, and if they notice that then they either try to cut down on the grossness, don't care, or they go out of their way to make me pay for daring to have that reaction. Now the number of people who would do the latter is 2 or 3 out of many jobs and maybe a thousand or more people that I have shared office space with over the course of 36 years, so it's not an everyday thing, and not something that I would expect a person without such triggers to notice.

Yes, of course the idea that some (notice I said some, not all) people with gross habits could stop if they wanted to, but they are either not aware or they just don't care, is presumptuous. Because I don't know what is going on in their heads. Not quite the same thing, but I have a friend who crunches his food so loudly you can literally hear him from the street when he is on the sofa watching TV, eating corn chips. With my dodgy hearing. Through his double brick walls. He also shoves huge amounts of food into his mouth and tries to carry on a conversation at the same time. One time years ago he phoned me and I could barely understand him, it sounded like he had a tennis ball in his mouth, and I asked him "are you eating?". He said "yeah, I just got home with a burger and thought I'd call you so I'd have something to do while I eat it". I asked him if people at work complain and he said they do. I pointed out that if people complain then it's really bad, we have people at work who eat loudly and nobody says anything. I asked him if the people at the office across the street complain as well. And yet he eats as quietly as a church mouse if he is with his girlfriend. Otherwise he just doesn't give a toss.

A lot of it is cultural as well, so if you work a lot with people from certain cultural backgrounds you will notice this stuff more. I worked in one country where there was a bathroom for our office with one wash basin to wash your hands in, but I never saw anyone wash their hands. Ever. Ones and Twos. Never. At first I thought that was kinda gross, but then I realized that the actual purpose of the wash basin was for ejecting stuff from one's sinuses into. I would like make a bundle of paper so that I could touch the taps (yes, there was stuff stuck to the taps) and wash my hands but I just gave up on that and took to washing my hands once a day at home (just for the 3 months I was on that project).

If you are triggered by certain noises then you will notice stuff. Like how someone will sit in a corner and make occasional gross noises, but the frequency and volume will go right up if there are other people around. Or if they are sitting in a meeting.

I've got lots more stories about gross people. Stuff that triggers me I never forget. But that's enough for one day.

[odeon]

I hadn't noticed whether people were inherently less considerate overall when they were in cubicles.

Thinking an open office inspires people to at least look busy, and that means they're probably also more quiet. Notice now it's much less common to walk up to someone and find them looking at their phone.

But that's just it. You want the appearance of looking busy which often defeats the purpose. A lot of my work I spend thinking rather than hacking away at the keyboard, but to other people it will look like I'm just staring or drawing faces or browsing distractedly, none of which is what people expect from someone busy working.

I always had a feeling that managers prefer open spaces because they can keep tabs on people.

Have always had jobs which require some level of contemplative screen staring, so sitting quietly staring at a screen with work on it seems sufficient to appearing busy. Though do think it's good an open office makes people more aware of appearances. Those people who frequently show up late, leave early, take long lunches, or don't show up at all, feel more exposed. Although they were probably highly noticed anyway even with walls and quietly ticking off their peers. People are more likely to be in their seats when they're supposed to, and that can ease underlying hostilities. People are less likely to dress like slobs, eat smelly food at their desk, or bring their kids into the office; again underlying hostilities. My boss seems to care about appearances. She doesn't come right out and say it, but have the impression she prefers us in our seats, to avoid work from home days, to take our machines home each day even when on vacation. Am happy to put on whatever appearances she wants me to.

It shouldn't be about location and appearances, it should be about delivery and productivity.

[Jack]

I hadn't noticed whether people were inherently less considerate overall when they were in cubicles.

Thinking an open office inspires people to at least look busy, and that means they're probably also more quiet. Notice now it's much less common to walk up to someone and find them looking at their phone.

But that's just it. You want the appearance of looking busy which often defeats the purpose. A lot of my work I spend thinking rather than hacking away at the keyboard, but to other people it will look like I'm just staring or drawing faces or browsing distractedly, none of which is what people expect from someone busy working.

I always had a feeling that managers prefer open spaces because they can keep tabs on people.

Have always had jobs which require some level of contemplative screen staring, so sitting quietly staring at a screen with work on it seems sufficient to appearing busy. Though do think it's good an open office makes people more aware of appearances. Those people who frequently show up late, leave early, take long lunches, or don't show up at all, feel more exposed. Although they were probably highly noticed anyway even with walls and quietly ticking off their peers. People are more likely to be in their seats when they're supposed to, and that can ease underlying hostilities. People are less likely to dress like slobs, eat smelly food at their desk, or bring their kids into the office; again underlying hostilities. My boss seems to care about appearances. She doesn't come right out and say it, but have the impression she prefers us in our seats, to avoid work from home days, to take our machines home each day even when on vacation. Am happy to put on whatever appearances she wants me to.

It shouldn't be about location and appearances, it should be about delivery and productivity.

But it is about delivery and productivity. It's as if you might be thinking everyone is like you, when you're probably a rarity. You said: "Why companies insist that people sit in open spaces trying to work is beyond me. Yeah, I know, it's cheaper but I'd think the loss in productivity would matter." For the reasons I've discussed, I can understand how an open office would increase productivity for the vast majority of people, as well as foster a work culture where employees are less hostile and behave more professionally. Would absolutely prefer a cube or office if given the choice, but it's certainly not beyond me why I don't have one.

[Minister Of Silly Walks]

Some people are more productive when left alone with as few distractions as possible. Most people work better in a team environment where team members are relying on other team members to get stuff done. In my job, for example, I'm most productive where I'm putting together workflow diagrams and user stories and acceptance criteria as soon as a new piece of work hits the table, then I'm handing that over to the dev team, then I'm helping the test team put test cases together in parallel with that work, then helping out with the testing and reviewing the testing, all the while clarifying stuff as required.

Working from home is problematic, about 50% of people get more done and the other 50% maybe log on once or twice to check their emails. So you end up with resentment if you allow that to continue, and you end up with more resentment if you allow some to work from home and some not to, and you end up with a lot of extra stress and workload for the team lead.

When I had a team of developers working for me a few years back and I was a kind of tech lead / business analyst at the same time, and the team was awesome and most of them were smarter than me, I'd be feeling really guilty about not having work for some of them. Because I'd gone overnight from trying to do the work of about 5 people by myself to having 9 people working with me and relying on me for guidance. So I'd find something for them and they'd be really happy. The thing is, some of the guys would spend weeks with nothing to do and they would look just as busy as when they were churning through work. Looking busy and productive is a kind of performance art.

[Jack]

The biggest change noticed with an open office, it that it dissolved the separation between management and their teams. Instead of being tucked away in offices, they're mixed in with everyone else and given the same workspaces. The VPs who still have offices were moved to the smallest spaces, while all of the large offices were converted into more conference rooms, collaborative spaces, or quiet rooms with comfy seats people can use to step away for a private phone call. Those spaces are all heavily used. Can see how removing that physical barrier and visual hierarchy could have a positive affect on how people feel and think about their managers.

[odeon]

I hadn't noticed whether people were inherently less considerate overall when they were in cubicles.

Thinking an open office inspires people to at least look busy, and that means they're probably also more quiet. Notice now it's much less common to walk up to someone and find them looking at their phone.

But that's just it. You want the appearance of looking busy which often defeats the purpose. A lot of my work I spend thinking rather than hacking away at the keyboard, but to other people it will look like I'm just staring or drawing faces or browsing distractedly, none of which is what people expect from someone busy working.

I always had a feeling that managers prefer open spaces because they can keep tabs on people.

Have always had jobs which require some level of contemplative screen staring, so sitting quietly staring at a screen with work on it seems sufficient to appearing busy. Though do think it's good an open office makes people more aware of appearances. Those people who frequently show up late, leave early, take long lunches, or don't show up at all, feel more exposed. Although they were probably highly noticed anyway even with walls and quietly ticking off their peers. People are more likely to be in their seats when they're supposed to, and that can ease underlying hostilities. People are less likely to dress like slobs, eat smelly food at their desk, or bring their kids into the office; again underlying hostilities. My boss seems to care about appearances. She doesn't come right out and say it, but have the impression she prefers us in our seats, to avoid work from home days, to take our machines home each day even when on vacation. Am happy to put on whatever appearances she wants me to.

It shouldn't be about location and appearances, it should be about delivery and productivity.

But it is about delivery and productivity. It's as if you might be thinking everyone is like you, when you're probably a rarity. You said: "Why companies insist that people sit in open spaces trying to work is beyond me. Yeah, I know, it's cheaper but I'd think the loss in productivity would matter." For the reasons I've discussed, I can understand how an open office would increase productivity for the vast majority of people, as well as foster a work culture where employees are less hostile and behave more professionally. Would absolutely prefer a cube or office if given the choice, but it's certainly not beyond me why I don't have one.

I don't understand why open spaces would increase productivity for the vast majority, sorry - you've not convinced me. I can see how it fosters an *appearance* of productivity but that's not the same thing.

I dunno. Maybe it's a cultural thing, too.

[odeon]

Looking busy and productive is a kind of performance art.

QFT

[Pyraxis]

I don't understand why open spaces would increase productivity for the vast majority, sorry - you've not convinced me. I can see how it fosters an *appearance* of productivity but that's not the same thing.

I dunno. Maybe it's a cultural thing, too.

The cultural thing is USA business culture needlessly glorifying extroversion.

In my open office they're busy attempting to introduce "quiet hours" where you're not allowed to book meetings or pester anyone, ironically. 

[Jack]

I hadn't noticed whether people were inherently less considerate overall when they were in cubicles.

Thinking an open office inspires people to at least look busy, and that means they're probably also more quiet. Notice now it's much less common to walk up to someone and find them looking at their phone.

But that's just it. You want the appearance of looking busy which often defeats the purpose. A lot of my work I spend thinking rather than hacking away at the keyboard, but to other people it will look like I'm just staring or drawing faces or browsing distractedly, none of which is what people expect from someone busy working.

I always had a feeling that managers prefer open spaces because they can keep tabs on people.

Have always had jobs which require some level of contemplative screen staring, so sitting quietly staring at a screen with work on it seems sufficient to appearing busy. Though do think it's good an open office makes people more aware of appearances. Those people who frequently show up late, leave early, take long lunches, or don't show up at all, feel more exposed. Although they were probably highly noticed anyway even with walls and quietly ticking off their peers. People are more likely to be in their seats when they're supposed to, and that can ease underlying hostilities. People are less likely to dress like slobs, eat smelly food at their desk, or bring their kids into the office; again underlying hostilities. My boss seems to care about appearances. She doesn't come right out and say it, but have the impression she prefers us in our seats, to avoid work from home days, to take our machines home each day even when on vacation. Am happy to put on whatever appearances she wants me to.

It shouldn't be about location and appearances, it should be about delivery and productivity.

But it is about delivery and productivity. It's as if you might be thinking everyone is like you, when you're probably a rarity. You said: "Why companies insist that people sit in open spaces trying to work is beyond me. Yeah, I know, it's cheaper but I'd think the loss in productivity would matter." For the reasons I've discussed, I can understand how an open office would increase productivity for the vast majority of people, as well as foster a work culture where employees are less hostile and behave more professionally. Would absolutely prefer a cube or office if given the choice, but it's certainly not beyond me why I don't have one.

I don't understand why open spaces would increase productivity for the vast majority, sorry - you've not convinced me. I can see how it fosters an *appearance* of productivity but that's not the same thing.

I dunno. Maybe it's a cultural thing, too.

Not really trying to convince you. Let's say for the sake of argument it's not more productive. There was actually a study which showed it it's not more productive, referenced by countless articles. Was hoping someone would bring it up, but oh well. Also saw a study out there which compares open office, cubicle and office, which concludes cubicle workers are the most productive. There's also a study which shows cubicle workers are the most unhappy and dissatisfied with their workspace. There's probably a reason cubes are compared to prison cells. It should be about productivity, sure, and also other things.

Looking busy and productive is a kind of performance art.

QFT

Guess all those people who I used to frequently see playing on their phones or browsing facebook will have to learn that art. Good.


One reason I'm looking forward to moving to the new facility is because it will be open office. If there were cubes, then only certain people would have the luxury of the views and natural lighting, and I'd be ticked if I didn't get one. When I was switched to open office, I had a window cube. It was a status symbol like the offices, and if being honest, that's the main reason I sneered at the change; I lost my special treatment. Whoopty doo. My losing it probably eased tensions around me.