>>My experience is that you can easily just as well not know what your coworkers are doing when they sit right next to you. Not in my experience. I mean, if yo

>>My experience is that you can easily just as well not know what your coworkers are doing when they sit right next to you. Not in my experience. I mean, if you never, ever talk to them despite sitting next to them, sure. But most people aren't that anti-social. Even if you don't make an effort to talk to people around you, general office chatter (e.g. water cooler talk, conversations in the lunch room, etc.) should be sufficient for you to keep a finger on the pulse of everything, so to speak.