I hate Ipods and headsets in the office 1

[langleymass]

Let me start out by saying that I have no problem with people listening to music in the workplace. I have noticed an enormous difference in my enjoyment of a job based on this.

But I am starting to hate Ipods and anything with headsets. It seems that more and more often, I approach someone to speak with him. He then removes his ear plug and says: "What?" I then repeat what I had just said.

It is obvious that headsets are an impediment to getting things done. What does everyone else think?

 

[langleymass]

In other words, employees use headsets because their employers are too cheap to give their employees real offices, even though such an office would result in increased productivity and probably pay for itself.

 

[svanels]

employees use headsets because their employers are too cheap to give their employees real offices

If you have a white collar staff of 150, and give everyone his own office, you will soon be out of bussiness. What is the space required for an office? What about the lightning, what about the ergonomics. How would you deal with productivity? Put closed circuit camera whatching every one? What happens if you have a fire? Evacuation of the building?

You can just threat people the same way like chickens are treated on a typical poultry farm.

Steven

 

[langleymass]

Upon what do you base the comment "you will soon be out of business"? I worked for an organization where just about everyone did have his/her own office.

 

[svanels]

Suppose you have a big organization, with 350 blue collar workers and 150 white collar workers. In an industrial environment, then the space occupied by the office people would be larger then the space occupied by the workfloor, if every office worker was sitting solely between his own four walls. To me that office will look somehow like Alcatraz. Two people in one room occupy less space then two people in two rooms. With the prices of construction/ft² skyrocketing, imagine the cost of maintaining the buildings. The Opex (Operating Expenditure) will be high, consequently the price of services will be high, result = outsourcing..

Steven

 

[chiph]

It depends on the business.

It's been shown that in software development, having private offices where people can concentrate on writing their code, pays for itself.

Your business success will depend on the extent to which programmers essentially live at your office. For this to be a common choice, your office had better be nicer than the average programmer's home. There are two ways to achieve this result. One is to hire programmers who live in extremely shabby apartments. The other is to create a nice office.

http://ccm.redhat.com/asj/managing-software-engineers/

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[svanels]

Yes Chip, it depends on the business, that is why I took the example of an industrial environment. Line supervisors must have their own private space (office).
Coders/programmers has to concentrate on their duties, but would you deal with a bank, where all the employees that attend the public are walking around with headphones? Or the helpdesk group?
The term workplace is generic.

Steven

 

[langleymass]

I wasn't talking about industrial workers on an assembly line. This board is called

http://www.tek-tips.com.

That was a rather long, but useful article. Thank you for posting the link.

 

[zeitghost]

I worked in a place that rather resembled Alcatraz, down to the bars on the windows...

Each little hamster had its own office.

I walked after 3 weeks.

 

[langleymass]

Hey, I hate cubes and don't really like small offices either. Some years ago, my eye doctor said that looking into a cube "closes" your eyes and increases your stress level. The best thing you can have is a window to look out regulary. This "opens" your eyes.

 

[BackStageJim]

Simple, get my attention first!

Perhaps, as in my site, a staff member talks to herself all day long! Which drags one into her world. One employee transferred just to get away from her self-dialog.

My .com radio is just to keep me productive. At least I don't call the wife 2-3 times a day like some staffers! Or talk so loud that they don't need a phone; like so many sales people do.

 

[LFI]

Yeah, there's a lot of rude noise in a cubicle environment, but as a coder, I appreciate being able to say someone's name out loud and asking them if I can "borrow their eyes" to help me figure out what I'm doing wrong with something (or vice-versa). Also, there are some conversations I don't mind eavesdropping on, like where people are planning on going to lunch today!

Dave

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce
they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does

 

[ikayak]

What about fan and equipment noise. I use headphones to block all of the noise. I work alone in a locked room, with concrete walls, no windows and no radio reception. If I turn up the volume on a CD player loud enough to hear it, the people in the hall can hear it too. By the way I do support in a jail and love my job and headphones.

 

[jshurst]

Headphones don't bother me in the least. What does bother me is if someone is listening to music without headphones, hopefully I'll like it, but what if I don't? If you're coming and want to talk with me, then send me an email first, or be prepared to wait until I'm at a good stopping point.

 

[eyeswideclosed]

I keep my headset on at all times even with no music playing in order to discourage people from pestering me so I CAN get some work done, the problem is too much socializing and chatty gossipers, not music, they see my headset on and keep walking.

 

[jshurst]

I do the same thing. I'm kind of curious to see what they'll say when they think I'm not listening ;-)