16 ms·

An office with "library rules"

• cjensen 14y ago
  At this moment, I have earplugs in with headphones over them. All because our tech support guy does not have an "indoor voice." It's very hard to be creative sometimes with nonsense going on around you.
  • Puer 14y ago
    I spend most of my day in the library at my school (it's the only place I can study between classes.) Even though it's a "library," the administrators don't enforce any of the noise rules, and it's (ironically) one of the noisiest places on the campus. There's one group who comes in every single morning and literally shout to communicate with each other. I've complained about them multiple times but nothing has been done. So what I've started doing is bringing two pairs of headphones: My Sennheiser in-ear buds and my Sony over-ear noise cancelling headphones. With both of them on and some Miles Davis playing softly in the background I can effectively block out all other noise.
    • anonymous 14y ago
      I've tried doing that but somehow cancelling all noise around me really bothers me. I'm used to hearing normal background noise and removing it weirds me out.
    • keithpeter 14y ago
      I'd follow this one up in a more formal way with the Librarians. There should be a range of environments to support different learning modes. In the city I live in, we have three Universities, and all of them have a 'zoned' approach. An outer work area where anything goes, some rooms where talking is allowed, and an inner quiet zone that is strictly enforced. People seem to find their equilibrium points. The three institutions vary in standing and clientèle. The Russell Group University has the largest silent zone and small peripheral anything goes zones. The situation is reserved for the 'community' University, with a small silent zone. The technical university has about equal quiet and noisy anything goes zones with a sort of 'sensible talking' buffer zone in the middle.
      • RegEx 14y ago
        My university library also has different "zones", with plenty of posters to remind you what zone you're in and what communication methods are appropriate.
        • keithpeter 14y ago
          But no enforcement in the quiet zones? Then that is a simple failure of service level agreement and should be pursued through the normal complaint procedures. If an organisation says they do something, then they should do it!
          • Cthulhu_ 14y ago
            And yet, with clear indication that certain areas are quiet zones, people and organizations should be able to rely on the common decency of people. People will in 99% of cases respect any 'no smoking' signs without enforcement from a 'shusher', so why not the 'be quiet' signs?
          • RegEx 14y ago
            I'm legitimately confused what you even mean by this comment. When did I say it wasn't enforced? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
            • keithpeter 14y ago
              The confusion is mine, I assumed that your comment was a second reply by Puer.
  • mwetzler 14y ago
    did you tell him that his voice is distracting? I didn't find out that my conference calls annoyed my coworkers until our annual anonymous survey. Wish I'd known sooner so I could have adjusted by behavior.
    • krickle 14y ago
      I think it seems like a rude question? I have coworkers that keep asking me trivial development questions and I don't really know how to say, "I'm going to need your first reaction to a problem to be Googling it".
    • cjensen 14y ago
      No. He is tech support and must talk. He literally doesn't have an "indoor voice", so there is nothing he can do about it.
• stuff4ben 14y ago
  Imagine working for a company that makes a conferencing product that likes to eat it's own dog food. Imagine lazy coworkers who sit next to each others cubicles yet dial into said conference call product and proceed to have their meetings from the comfort of their seats. Annoying doesn't come close to it.
  • callmeed 14y ago
    Apologies for being dense, but I don't fully understand your metaphor. Is 37s also annoying because they do something similar? Or, are they solving an annoying problem which you're describing?
    • jfb 14y ago
      I read that as simple exasperation with a very unlibrary-like environment, myself.
    • MattSayar 14y ago
      I think he's just complaining about his workplace.
  • stevewillows 14y ago
    In my office we will have hundreds of people dialing in to the same call on speaker phone.
  • gadders 14y ago
    Twilio? :-)
• ragweed 14y ago
  My local library observes "coffee shop rules." People sit with their laptops and take phone calls from wherever they receive them. Even the librarians are loud. It's fucking bullshit.
  • davidvaughan 14y ago
    I noticed my local library got rid of about fifty percent of its few remaining books a couple of weeks ago. The extra space means the body of the building is now devoted to activities relating to schools, I think. As somebody who once did work experience here: http://tinyurl.com/d28gxz4 http://tinyurl.com/d28gxz4, I was a bit puzzled to be in an almost bookless library. I suspect "coffee shop rules" are the future of libraries.
    • jff 14y ago
      My local library has a coffee shop in it. Luckily there are lots of books, I haven't seen them removing any.
      • ShawnBird 14y ago
        Luckily there are lots of books, I haven't seen them removing any. Why is this lucky? Are the books being used?
        • jff 14y ago
          Actually yes! It's a pretty nice place.
          • ShawnBird 14y ago
            Oh, never mind. I have seen some libraries that have very low usage rates of books compared to computers and I would not mourn a scaling down of their books on hand as long as they kept a strong catalog.
  • xxpor 14y ago
• Offler 14y ago
  The problem may be down to their poor conversations. We have both wide ranging general knowledge and focused technical conversations in my office involving groups of people and I would be sad to lose that. Talk about something that can deliver value or engage people and then the conversations are worthwhile. " Sarah Houghton 10 Dec 12 The ironic thing is that as a librarian, I can tell you that for the last decade (at least) most libraries don’t enforce “library silence.” We encourage people to talk, to collaborate, to discuss. As long as you’re not annoying the hell out of the people around you, we encourage a low level of conversation and noise. "
  • manuelflara 14y ago
    At my old company, before we moved into a bigger, modern space where all developers fit in the same huge room, we were all split into 3 or 4 different spaces. At first I was in this room with another 8-10 developers. We would have conversations through the day. Sometimes technical but offtopic, sometimes about our infrastructure (someone helping someone else fix a bug) and sometimes just plain offtopic/fun. For some reason I moved to a different room with different developers around me. Soon, I learned that that whole "talk normally while people beside you are working" thing wasn't the norm there, so I stopped, and it was quite a "library rules" place to work, to describe it using the article's words. Now, I was sad to lose all those conversations, but I became a heck of a lot more productive.
• jdavis703 14y ago
  Sometimes I've wished for this, but I think it would ultimately stifle collaboration. Instead it would be nice if more open floor plan offices had study carrels -- places you could go when you need quite to focus.
  • stock_toaster 14y ago
    I think they are called 'offices'. If the door is open, come on in. If the door is shut, and something is on fire, knock. If the door is shut, and something is not on fire, seek alternative means (email, ask someone else, etc). Honestly, if people can work remotely, why can't they work from the office in a room with an actual door? I am not sold on open floor plans, but if that is what you end up with, I would at least prefer a quiet one.
    • packetslave 14y ago
      One thing I think MSFT really got right: engineers (including devops-type engineers) get a real office, with real walls and a door. It might be the size of a broom closet, but it's private. Note: this is based on what I was told when I interviewed for an ops role there in 2011. No idea how universal/up-to-date it is.
      • radnor 14y ago
        It depends on what group and/or building you're in. Many of the engineers I worked with at Bing were doubled up (or more) because there simply wasn't enough room to give everyone their own office.
      • Elepsis 14y ago
        Still overwhelmingly true with a few buildings that are exceptions.
    • mgkimsal 14y ago
      Almost every place I've been... developers with doors is just a no-no. Call me cynical, but I think it's really a status symbol for management (at least, in most of the places I've seen inside of). If people really can do productive coding work with 4 people within 10 feet of them all having separate phone conversations, great, let them stay in the open bullpen-style areas. For others who need some modicum of quiet and non-visual stimulation, give an office with a door that closes things out. But if you did that, there'd be very little visual status between a CFO and a developer. Those who insist on developers being in open bullpen areas would do well to try to do their own work out in the same area for a month. They'd see just how hard it is, and how much unproductive stuff actually goes on in many situations.
• trentmb 14y ago
  I prefer a loud workplace to a quiet one. A single noise grabs your attention in a quiet workplace. In a loud one, it all just becomes background noise and is easy to ignore.
  • mcgwiz 14y ago
    I think it's fair to say an environment that is so quiet you can hear a pin drop (i.e. ideal movie theater quiet) is not going to be welcome by most, for the reason you cited. But the same effect can occur in a noisy place as well, if a single individual is sporadically more noisy than the background noise. So it's more about achieving some constant noise level, above which no sporadic noises rise. IMHO, the "library/whisper quiet" rule achieves this.
    • deleted 14y ago
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  • jasonfried 14y ago
    Silence is not the same as quiet. Our office isn't silent. It's softly quiet.
    • deleted 14y ago
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    • stevewillows 14y ago
      How did you go about starting a culture of library rules though? Did it naturally start like that or was there a defining moment where it was addressed?
  • rhizome 14y ago
    Wherever I've worked, no matter how quiet it's been, keyboards still make noise.
    • Cthulhu_ 14y ago
      And the best keyboards are also the noisiest, :p.
• flatline 14y ago
  This is essentially a one-line blog post and is basically just spam. Even as a developer I've had to spend significant portions of my day on the phone, which you can't really do in a library-quiet voice. Many offices don't have adequate amounts of dedicated rooms for this, and it is not very practical to abandon your desk for a significant portion of the day to do work.
  • mcgwiz 14y ago
    To be fair, the author kept the post short. I didn't find any fluff in it. Perhaps as the guy on the team that's constantly interfacing with managers or clients, you don't find any value in a quiet atmosphere. How do the rest of the folks on your team feel? Of course, cultural practices reinforce each other. If your team practices both Everyone Is Client-Facing, and Phone-First, then there's likely a lot of chatter anywhere you go in your office and people ironically resort to headphones to find quiet. In many teams, there are only a few that require the use of their voice above a low volume, and even then it's for limited intervals only. Without a simple well-understood rule, such folks can dominate environments and unnecessary interpersonal friction can develop.
  • lnanek2 14y ago
    I code around 16 hours a day and only have to do one call a day. I'd love a library office. Hell, sometimes I have to take my laptop outside to get some big commit done that will take 6 hours of concentration or so, if my various headphones can't block out the constant talking.
    • bconway 14y ago
      I code around 16 hours a day You're doing it wrong.
      • iamdave 14y ago
        How?
        • 14y ago
• jwwest 14y ago
  Americans don't value silence the way other cultures do (I'm an American btw). I'm not sure if it has to do with the ratio of introverts to extroverts, or if it's simply that we're an individualistic culture, but often I strain to hear in a restaurant these days. Anecdotally, I've noticed that the higher end restaurants tend to be quieter. Not sure if this is because of clientele or the higher quality construction of such places blocking more sound. While I was in Japan, I noticed that it was quite possible (and many did) to take a nap in McDonald's. Conversations indoors tended to be very reserved. As a country, I think we're getting louder. I've brought a Decibel Meter with me before and seen it hit north of 70dB. This constant level of noise everywhere we go can't be good for our hearing.
  • joezydeco 14y ago
    Higher-end places in America do design their spaces to be somewhat smaller, intimate, and mute sound. Diners and management also respect auditory space a little more when you're spending big bucks on a meal. These places also don't blast rock music over PA systems while people are trying to eat. I've been in some joints where it's literally an arms war between the diners and whoever has their hand on the volume control. Management wants the place to seem lively and hip, but by the end of the evening people are literally shouting themselves hoarse.
    • danudey 14y ago
      Playing music louder and dimming the lights to reduce visibility is a technique used to make a place seem busier than it actually is. I once visited a restaurant that appeared to be using this technique when we were the only people in the entire place (~7500 square foot space). I literally had to lean across the table to shout at a coworker because he couldn't hear what I was saying otherwise.
  • derekp7 14y ago
    It doesn't take much sound dampening to significantly lower the sound in a public place, due to the positive feedback loop. Take a restaurant with tile floors and cheap ceilings -- not only does that make it louder, but people have to then talk louder to be heard. And that in turn makes the volume even louder yet. And table cloths really make a big difference also. Another thing that can affect volume is the density of tables in a restaurant -- same feedback loop in place. If you can't hear the conversation at the table next to you, then you can speak in a lower voice also.
• hnriot 14y ago
  Sounds like an awful place to work. While i'm all for productivity, I have never seen it correlated with office volume, either positively or negatively. For as long as phones sit on desks, this policy sounds ridiculous.
  • meej 14y ago
    one of the best things about my office is that there are no phones on desks.
• vvpan 14y ago
  I would like to disagree. I have found that an office that is too quite is an office where people probably don't communicate much, and is not a healthy environment. And it's the office where people sit by each other's desks all the time is where work gets done. Of course there are extremes to everything, though.
  • j-kidd 14y ago
    > And it's the office where people sit by each other's desks all the time is where work gets done. Then I wonder how projects like Linux kernel, KDE, Python, etc manage to get any work done. In software development, I think the most important communication needed is to do everything in the open. This means things like a ticketing system so that everyone knows what everyone else is working on, a continuous integration system that permits deployment only if all tests pass, a wiki system to share various insights, etc. Currently, I work in an open plan. Information hoarding is the norm here, despite chatters going on all days long. Open communication is a concept that has nothing to do with open plan.
    • kyllo 14y ago
      I agree, you can have openness without a lot of talking, and you can have a lot of talking without openness. The two might be correlated, but not as strongly as one might thing. Information sharing and openness are what you want to promote, and it's the culture, not the seating plan, that either promotes or stifles it.
• vitalique 14y ago
  I'm shocked at how many people here find loud environments to be totally OK, some even preferring those to quiet ones. If you are working in absolute silence and start to feel uncomfortably, you can always introduce some custom noise, be it a rain sound or ocean shore or noise of any color you like. Feeling chatty? Take Bob to a cooler and chat what you want, he's a chatter, too. On the other hand, it is very problematic (and really rarely effective) to just stand up in the middle of the noisy room and ask everyone, however kindly you manage to do that, to shut up at least for ten minutes, because you absolutely cannot concentrate in this goddamn noise that's been driving you nuts since said Bob came in at 9:05. The point being, I want to be in control of my sound environment. Preferably without the need of earplugs or bulky headphones or other extreme measures like showing up at 7 a.m. or staying late just to get some shit done when the office is finally empty. I cannot concentrate, cannot even think clearly if there is almost any kind of noise - chatter, music, phone talks nearby, traffic noise from the street when the window is open or almost anything else, including my own voice. I know a lot of folks that, like me, would rather spend a night in the forest than an hour in the open space office. From some comments I presume that it is probably impossible to convey to some lucky people with their extreme tolerance towards loud sounds how excruciatingly painful constant, unavoidable noise may be, but let me try anyways: it is a real damn torture resulting in days of not zero but of negative productivity. It's been my worst enemy at every place that I've worked at (close second are constant distractions, but I think these two are cousins), to the extent that my only special requirement for any job or workplace now is: please, let me sit in a quiet place.
  • sharkweek 14y ago
    I'm so fascinated how this varies so much person to person. For me, my biggest "focus" times are almost always with noise-cancelling headphones on with blaring music that I don't have to think too much about (no vocals, etc). Even when I'm alone in the office, I still need something like that to be at maximum productivity. However, if I can hear people talking around me, my mind almost immediately gravitates toward their conversation; one of the biggest distractions to my work.
    • JabavuAdams 14y ago
• up_and_up 14y ago
  Is it just me or are the 37S blog posts getting shorter and shorter? Can we expect to be reading haikus from them in 6 months?
  • fbuilesv 14y ago
    Out of curiosity, does this bother you? I'm sometimes glad when authors take the time to be concise and put their ideas out there in the shortest way possible while still being interesting.
    • up_and_up 14y ago
      No, I am just noting the change. Actually, it seems like when they changed to the 'new' blog template, which is less condensed on the page, their posts decreased in length.
  • mctx 14y ago
    Silence for working Quiet as a library At thirty seven
    • teffen 14y ago
      ...Too lazy to finish sente
• nicholassmith 14y ago
  How about this, a library with grownup, sensible rules. I've worked in library rules offices before and it often seems to discourage random chats and conversational runoffs that can help push code forward. Loud offices = not a great work environment, learn to understand when silence is needed, give people the space they need to work.
• tsuyoshi 14y ago
  It's a nice sentiment, but I must quibble with one assertion: "Everyone knows how to behave in a library." I can say from experience in many libraries that not everyone understands library rules. There's an old stereotype about black people not shutting up in a movie theater. There's a lot of truth to it, but it's not just black people, and it's not just in movie theaters. And then there are the libraries, growing in number over time, that have simply abandoned the ideal of silence. Most libraries still ban loud talking, cell phone use, music, etc. but now some of them tolerate it and some even encourage it. Some of these noisy libraries designate a quiet area, but it tends to feel like an anachronistic throwback, designed to mollify the people who aren't coming to the library just to hang out. I think in the future the phrase "library rules" will not mean what you might think, if it still means anything at all.
  • jerf 14y ago
    "There's an old stereotype about black people not shutting up in a movie theater. There's a lot of truth to it, but it's not just black people, and it's not just in movie theaters." That seems like a strangely incendiary way of saying there's a lot of people who don't know when to be quiet....
  • vacri 14y ago
    'Library Rules' also include things like "you're only allowed to be on the computers for 15 minutes" and "Storytime is at 2pm". Libraries have changed over the years.
  • rhizome 14y ago
    I have not yet visited a library that tolerates loud Skyping.
  • lizzard 14y ago
    I wish you did not repeat racist stereotypes thinking that that would help to make your point. It doesn't. It just makes you sound racist.
• deleted 14y ago
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• aaronz8 14y ago
  Is it too much to ask everyone to get used to it? I used to think that "this is just the way I am" and "I can't change" until I was forced to be adaptable, so here are some of my personal experiences: I used to not be able to sleep if there was any light at all. Even regular curtains were not good enough, they had to be the ones that blocked out all light from outside. I sometimes would wake up just because someone turned on the light in the hallway, because it leaked under my door. I also had to turn my computer off, because the whirring of the fans would keep me wide awake. And then I entered college. People here are up 24 hours a day. Even I, during some weeks, am nocturnal due to homework. I never had a roommate, but I would wake up due to my neighbors roommates. I HAD to adapt, or else I wouldn't be able to survive. With this mentality, I was able to adjust myself so that I could sleep wherever, whenever. (reminds me of the "Everything is my fault" article from yesterday") I feel like this situation is similar. If you find yourself not to be able to concentrate in a certain environment, find something you must do and do it in that environment. Train yourself so that you can concentrate any time and any where. Give less excuses for yourself to procrastinate, and feel awesome at the same time for being so productive.
  • mahyarm 14y ago
    It's a question of degree. I can work in a noisy open office space, but I'm more productive if I can control the noise and have my back to the wall. Your sleep quality is probably effected by the amount of light and other such disturbances.
  • jamesmiller5 14y ago
    Sure, we all have to adapt when we don't have control over our environment but the situation in the article is a bit different than your own as the author and the authors peers all agree to a mutually beneficial behavior in an environment they fully control. Presumably, they now have a better working environment when adhering to the rules collectively rather than each of them individually trying to adapt. The noise level in the office is akin to a tragedy of the commons and this is their solution.
• mapgrep 14y ago
  It's perverse to put people in a collaborative open plan office and make them be quiet. Quiet, focused employees do not need to be there; they can work from home or a closed office. And they should absolutely be empowered to do so. This smells like a "hurry in and shut up" situation. While it's better to have quiet crammed mandatory office hours than loud ones, it's even better to keep people who need solitude out of the bullpen entirely.
• TeMPOraL 14y ago
  I wonder, how do people do pair programming in quiet offices? Those two things, both regarded by many as desirable and positive, seem to be at odds with each other.
  • joshuacc 14y ago
    Perhaps using small rooms rather than in an open area?
• abalashov 14y ago
  I personally would find this oppressive and unpleasant. That's not to say that my concentration is better served by working at a rock concert, but "library rules" are robotic, not particularly humanity-affirming. The offices in which I've gotten the most work done had a low to midlevel din of casual conversations and banter, like a place that lets humans be the social animals they are, while still encouraging some kind of collective respect for the idea of getting work done. It's a hard balance to adhere to consistently, but I'd rather struggle with the vacillation than work in a library. In fact, this is the very reason I gave up working at home after two years: it's too quiet. You can hear a pin drop. A library to me has the ambiance of a funeral home, and encourages similarly dark thoughts. Needless to say, I got a lot more done in an office with an officemate, where we were both banging away at our keyboards and casually chit-chatting all day.
  • swah 14y ago
    With one coworker I believe its perfect, because any of the two can end the conversation. When its 6, though, you get caught up in conversation from the other folks, just when you're trying to get into flow.
    • NegativeK 14y ago
      There's a happy median. Don't throw darts at employees who don't engage in dart throwing. Don't be excessively loud. Don't drum on other people's desks. On the flipside: don't get angry when people aren't enforcing library rules around you. Use headphones as a signal that you don't wish to be disturbed (and to block out noise, obviously.) Et cetera.
      • swah 14y ago
        Well, I'm easily disturbed... If people start discussing something and laughing, I always end up too curious not to take my headphones off and participate...
• deleted 14y ago
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• greggman 14y ago
  Meh! To each their own. I turned down a job at Nintendo's branch office in Tokyo because it was too quiet. Quiet = boring to me. On the other hand most of my experience comes from games and the teams that were the most fun were the ones where we were all in the same room and could look over each others shoulders and collaborate on design. We weren't loud but we also weren't quiet.
• roberthahn 14y ago
  I'm amazed that this post has proven to be controversial. Let me relate my perspective as a profoundly deaf person working in an open-plan office space. When I bring up the fact that the environment is too noisy, the number one suggestion people make is "why don't you turn off your hearing aids?" This is not practical for a number of reasons. With my hearing aids off, I will not hear you. Which you might argue is kind of the point, but the moment you want to engage me in conversation, you'll wish that I somehow "just knew" when to make an exception, and respond, rather than (unintentionally, I assure you) treat you rudely by ignoring you. I've been ignored before, and I know other (hearing) people who have been ignored. I know how it feels and wouldn't wish it on anyone. Then there's the isolation. This may sound familiar to you: there was a link on HN pointing to David Peter's "Being Deaf" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001727 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001727). If you haven't done so, be sure to check it out. The big takeaway is the feeling of isolation he feels in the workplace. That isolation is real. I have to fight it too. Turning off my hearing aids makes this worse, not better. Turning off the aids is unsafe too. With my aids off, I will not hear a fire alarm. I speak from experience -- I had someone come to fetch me because I didn't have my hearing aids in when the alarm went off. Some of you may have read Mike Mackenzie's "My journey to a cochlear implant" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4883252 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4883252) The big takeaway here is how much effort is needed by someone who is deaf in order to 'signal process' their way through a conversation. Even with my aids on, I have to make a strong effort just to get through conversations. Hearing isn't a skill I could get better at if I just practice. The signal I hear is garbled; if I can't ungarble it, then my choices are to get you to repeat what you said clearly (not loudly), or give up. So. If I should ever get the opportunity to work with any of you noisy, chatty, extremely talented people, I hope you won't mind so much if I ask you to follow ‘library rules’.
• infoseckid 14y ago
  An office with "jail rules"
• exodust 14y ago
  Not a sensible idea due to the fact that a library is about reading books, an office is about doing work. Office work requires communication - on phone, in person. The nature of high-pressure business environments means lots of passionate conversations, debates, having a laugh to ease tension... I cannot think of anything worse than blocking the natural office environment with artificial rules designed for a completely different purpose.
• rileyt 14y ago
  I listen to headphones almost the entire day, but when I want to have a conversation with someone, I sure as hell don't want to have to go to some meeting room to have it. It just seems like asking your employees not to communicate...
• perlpimp 14y ago
  get a pair of noise canceling headphones and get to work. I like quiet space to work in as well and I see need for work places where people can communicate in the most comfortable way. I suppose there should be quiet working rooms for people that do really need the silence. I use AudioTechnical ATH-ANC23 and they are fantastic: portable, enegry efficient and work well without battery power to get to a quieter space within noisy working environment.
• cmccabe 14y ago
  How about an office with "cubicles." Problem solved.
• torqueador 14y ago
  We tried aromatherapy and soothing water sounds - they helped immensely. Our productivity went up. Particularly effective were gingerbread aroma and brook sounds.
• Nordvind 14y ago
  I'd like to have a look at such office. That's strange that such an idea is not popular, I have yet to see a person that doesn't enjoy working in library.
• deleted 14y ago
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• gadders 14y ago
  Has anyone ever had any success with a "Don't interrupt me if I have a red hat on/raise a flag/etc as I need to concentrate"?
• happywolf 14y ago
  As can be seen there are people who like noise and those who like quietness. Actually this problem can be resolved as long as a company has enough sound-proofing rooms: for type 1, just lock yourself in a big room with those who like noise, if there isn't enough people, there are a lot of noisy local/Internet radio stations to play with. For type 2, the solution is the same, stay in the room for quietness.
• chrisdone 14y ago
  I like how the part of the page that's original content is shorter than the rest which is gaudy advertisement and brand promotion.
• Philadelphia 14y ago
  Ugh. I'm working in an office now that's library-like. It's totally oppressive. I'm afraid to open my mouth, because anything I say will be heard by absolutely everyone else. As a result, no one asks any questions, no one discusses problems, and I can go a whole day without any human interaction. It's really torturous.
  • smspence 14y ago
    I would LOVE to work in an office like that. Mine is so noisy, it drives me insane and I cannot concentrate on my work.