Qualities of offices vary widely. I once worked for a few months (thanks to an acquisition) in an open-office plan a few stories up a tall building. Whole flo

Qualities of offices vary widely. I once worked for a few months (thanks to an acquisition) in an open-office plan a few stories up a tall building. Whole floor was open except HR (team room along the outside, with windows), a few meeting rooms (along the outside, with windows) and managers' offices (along the outside, with windows). All those closed-in rooms around the perimeter were fully glass, since otherwise the rest of the place would have been really damn dark. One of four walls of exterior windows was part of the main, open, office area. The specific situation at my desk: my back to my skip-level manager's glass-walled office, whose desk faced in at my back (else other people would be able to look over the manager's shoulder as they worked, and obviously that's horrible), area behind me also a major walkway for ~1/6-1/5 of the total floor, desks were truly-open cubicle-system-construction thingies–so, "walls" are the same height as the desks, nothing resembling an actual visibility- or noise-blocking wall anywhere. The woman whose desk was directly across and facing mine often hummed to herself while "in the zone". In my line of sight, just top-left of my monitor was a large TV mounted on the central pillar (bathrooms, elevators, tiny break & coffee room) playing (muted, mercifully) company propaganda and announcement-videos and slideshows all fucking day. The floor shook when anyone walked anywhere on our ~half of it, which meant my monitor shook. Probably 150 people on that floor. So, my monitor was shaking much of the time. There were also some pretty astounding cultural problems that overlapped (the fucking nerf-fights the balding 40-year-olds a couple desks down from me would engage in daily, to pick maybe the most minor problem), but I'm sticking just to the problems with my desk per se. I have no idea how anyone was expected to get anything done in that environment. It was hell.