I'm going to glom on to your comment to make a personal observation about the ineffectiveness, inefficiency, and frustration of needlessly noisy, distracting wo

I'm going to glom on to your comment to make a personal observation about the ineffectiveness, inefficiency, and frustration of needlessly noisy, distracting work environments. A full day or even long day of being really productive can be energizing. You can't do that non-stop, all day, every day (meaning from waking to sleeping), but it can be a powerful feeling to really "get stuff done". Waiting for your neighbors to shut up so that you can actually think things through, for the umpteenth status meeting to grind its way through more or less "reading the memo", and working on far less than optimal equipment? Not so much. It's all been said before. But if management wants to fix the problem (hint: often they don't, really), best to actually identify the problem, not a symptom.