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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> The argument of "increased collaboration" that I keep hearing is kind of negated when people have the soccer game on and you're bombarded with constant cheering

Is there anything less professional than watching a game at work? I really don't get why people do this, and why they think it's okay.

Granted, I don't like sports — but I like TV, and I wouldn't watch TV at work. I like computer games, but I wouldn't play computer games at work. It's just odd that sports fans think it's okay to distract people during work hours.

At least pop off down to the pub or something.

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I agree. When I suggested putting on a low-budget 50's monster movie on as background noise (e.g. Gamera, Godzilla, The Giant Claw, something that's amusing to look at for thirty seconds, laugh a bit, but not overly distracting), people act almost offended that I would waste company time like that. But if the TV has some form of ball on it, drop everything.

the important people in the office both get to dictate what's allowed, and are in my experience more likely to be extroverted/sports-watchy types. Thus they exploit their position to watch sports with the other important people and who cares what the nerds think/want.

I think people are generally more tolerant of live events. I've been in offices where everyone's watching a political inauguration, or dramatic rescue, etc.

Last time (perhaps the previous football World Cup?) my manager simply said I could go home once the game started, as no-one else was going to do any work so that was fair.

I worked in a highrise office that had TVs ringing the floor that you could remote into to display dashboards and whatnot. One day I decided to play, on mute, endless episodes of How It's Made.

For reference, I work in a hardware engineering group. Some mesmerizing process would show up on screen, one person would stop and stare, and 5 minutes later we have a half dozen engineers who've stopped what they were doing to watch How It's Made.

Eventually we settled on Bob Ross as a happy medium in terms of "Pleasant Ambiance" and "Not Too Distracting."

People have been waiting for it for four years. And your national team only plays 4 or 5 games. Give'm a break.

That's making the assumption that they stop watching when your national team is not playing, which hasn't been the case here.

Also, as stated, even if you love sports, if I were to turn on something like Die Hard and cheer at the screen every few minutes when Bruce Willis does something awesome, or play a video game and yell profanities because I died, people would (rightly) think I'm a jerk and distracting everyone. Even if I only did once every four years.

Just watch it in the breakroom or somewhere where it doesn't disturb others. At one previous employer, they reserved a big conference room / auditorium and got food, like a mini team building event. At another a bunch of people just went to a bar en masse. If you can't take 90 minutes out of your team's schedule, or if it's considered OK to just blast the game in an open-office, there's something wrong with the work culture IMO.

And I've been waiting for years for a bunch of new Anime releases and other shows.

Should they just give me a break to watch TV at work?

Not really, because it's probably just you. Quite a few people in this thread really don't understand how big of an event thr World Cup is...

It seems they also don't realize that people are watching a LIVE event, which is completely different than watching a movie.

I've worked places where we would watch live streams of rocket launches (back when launches were less routine than they are now).

It is not unreasonable to ask people to move to an area where people aren't trying to work, even if the event is live. Many people do not care about <x>ball and would like to work, and typically an office is the place where you are supposed to do that. Having the game on in the common work area is incredibly distracting with people cheering.

Many people who are trying to work do not care if the event is live. Even as someone who also enjoys watching rocket launches, I wouldn't cheer loudly when it took off, and I'd probably go to some kind of common area to watch it to begin with.

This is the better approach. Make arrangements for people to watch while not disturbing the rest.

It isn't a big event though. They kick a ball into a rectangular volume.

And us software devs push buttons on a keyboard. You can make anything sound useless if you make it your goal to do so...

I don't think that's a fair assessment. Quite a few people in this thread do not share the same values that you do, even the more fundamental ones like patriotism.

It doesn't matter how big a deal it is. It's not work. Even if it's a natural disaster or a war, if it's not work you go watch it in a break room or you take PTO and stay home or you do whatever you need to ensure that it's not disruptive to others. The level of entitlement necessary to believe that your company and everyone in it should accommodate your personal non-work video watching boggles my mind.

But when the non World Cup watchers are in the minority then you have it exactly backwards. You're asking all the football fans (which at World Cup time is nearly everyone) to accommodate your idiosyncratic personal desire to carry on working.

The desire to carry on working isn't an idiosyncratic personal desire. It's why you're paid to be there, why the space exists. How is that not supernova-level obvious? Can someone's sense of entitlement be so huge that it blots out even that? I wouldn't have thought so until now.

It's completely obvious, you're right, but you are missing my point to some extent. It's nothing to do with personal entitlement. I'm guessing you've never been in a European office when the national team is playing an important World Cup match. Probably around 90% of people are not working at that point. Its like a public holiday. Consider the reaction if someone asked all the support staff to come into the office on a Sunday because they felt like getting some work done.

Did I say it is OK to disrupt others in the workplace? Of course it isn't, regardless of the event.

I was responding to a comment that compared watching a movie to following the World Cup live. The two are not comparable at all. I was also responding to other comments that were somehow dumbfounded by others wanting to watch the World Cup in general.

How does that change anything whatsoever?

In America, people tend to watch any of the games, or at least that’s been my experience.

I don’t begrudge people their entertainment, but surely it’s polite not to foist it on others? I don’t play Minecraft let’s play videos for hours at the office, after all!

Yeah they have been waiting four years four that, four years for euro cup, a year for tour de france.

Plus of course all the normal games, etc.

Add it all up and there is fucking sports all the time.

Again not a problem as long as you don't drag me down to that level.

They have a break. It's called "time off".

That and dogs in the office. Jesus what’s wrong with people. (The fact you’re being downvoted is proof we are living in the end times.)

I did a recent stint in a central government office (London, UK) and having your dog with you in the office seemed quite normal... to them. To me, as a seasoned IT contractor... not so much.

we have dogs in the office. they're quiet and most people love them. in any case they are the least of the distractions...and usually only if you made the miserable decision to eat lunch at desk (which in an open office can be even more of a nuisance)

Dogs are fun to have around. I love to give them scratches and bellyrubs when I need a distraction from frustration. I'm allergic and my arms will get itchy but it's worth it.

This thread of Hacker News kvetching has really lost focus on the case against open offices. This reads like a contest of who can be the most uptight in the office.

I agree.

I like cats, dog and my son. Do I think added any of them to my office would be a good idea? No.

I go to work to well, work. I like my co-workers, don't mind talking with them a bit and am even friends with some of them. That doesn't mean I want them to bring all their distractions and things that bring them joy to the office. I want us all to get everything done quickly and correctly so that we can all go home and enjoy the things we like.

If you spend well over 50% of your day in a certain place you should damn well enjoy being there.

This sort of outlook might work for those of us that are workaholics, but for everyone else it's a major mental health hazard. Not everyone has wives or children or partners or scores of friends to spend their nights with. I wouldn't be so blase about taking all enjoyment out of the rest of the time those people are spending on this earth.

I really cannot see the comparison, unless the dogs are barking. I find sportsball* at work extremely annoying, but dogs are relaxing to have around.

*Yeah, I know, live and let live, but that is basically impossible with the current sport fanatics around here.

For one thing, they shed and make your clothes and personal spaces look disgusting. They also try to interact with you and touch you without your consent. Dogs are animals. They belong outside, not in shared people spaces.

One dog usually isn’t a problem, but it might not scale up from there depending on the dogs.

When will they allow us to take our toddlers to work? Could really save on daycare costs :)

Not a toddler, but I did take my 4 year old to work for a half day once when childcare fell through. I have my own office though and she was quiet, playing with blocks in a corner.

One of my colleagues brings his 5-y/o to work once a week (open office of course), and let me tell you: a chattering, running, squealing kid is even more distracting than the dogs and televisions put together.

Yeah, had a dev manager that used to bring his daughter, who I'd guess to be around 10. She was so noisy and obnoxious, I seriously thought she had a mental disability, so I cut her some slack (not that it suddenly made it okay to take her to work). And then I figured out that she was just undisciplined...

That same office (which, as I'm sure you have figured out, was an open office) allowed dogs. Mostly fine, I'd take our well-trained, quiet female pit bull into the office. She'd bug me to go play around outside more than I would have liked, but was otherwise inconspicuous. But as someone else in the thread has pointed out, dogs in the office doesn't scale. There's gonna be the one (or more) dog (much like the one child noted above) that doesn't belong in an office. One lady brought her other-dog-hating dog every day. "Bark, bark, bark" every time another dog was in sight. Etc., etc.

I guess my point is, yessh people, what happened to the professional work environment?

So much this. Workplaces used to be for working. Then you could go home after 8 hours and let go. Now you spend 12 hours getting half the work done because the office is no longer a workplace but a hangout.

'I guess my point is, yessh people, what happened to the professional work environment?'

Maybe related to bullshit jobs since these people are obviously not doing any real work, just bringing their homelife to the office in order to make time pass quicker?

Mmm, possibly; I cut down to taking the dog only once or twice a week because she took a non-trivial bit of maintenance and, well, I have work to do.

Agreed! Some people are allergic to dogs. Some are afraid of dogs.

And some dogs are jerks. Worked in a place where the boss brought their loud dog to work. Barked constantly, disrupted work, growled whenever clients came into the office. The boss acted like she didn't hear anything.

I’m semi-allergic to dogs and deathly allergic to cats. One of my previous jobs started out as people bringing in their dogs (which was always fun when I was on a call and two of them got into a fight), and shortly before I left they started allowing cats, as well. I raised the fact that I’m allergic to both and mostly got ignored with an “apology”. And most people in the office looked at you like you were an animal-hating monster if you even suggested they take away that policy.

I like dogs. I have dogs (they came with my wife). But I don’t want to work in a goddamn kennel.

What, you don't like meeting Dooglers at work? What kind of heartless person are you?

(Fun fact: Google is officially a dog company. Cats are highly discouraged.)

To pile on, I used to work in an office where a coworker's spouse sometimes showed up with their dog and newborn baby, in the middle of the day. Then I got to enjoy 20-40 minutes of high-pitched screeching in the office as the Slack channel was littered with things like, "WHERE IS THE LITTLE HUMAN. I MUST SEE THE LITTLE HUMAN" and "LOOK AT THE FLUFFER!"

Sartre was right. Hell is other people.

Hell is other people and their stinky microwaved seafood leftovers wafting through the open office.

I once worked in an agency where the MD had a dog. Sometimes he used to wash it in the sink in the kitchen.

(That said, they had the most expensive and best coffee machine I've ever seen in an office, and a guy who used to make brilliant cocktails on a Friday afternoon - he also stands out in my memory as one of the few front-end developers I've met who couldn't write JavaScript or CSS. That was a surreal contract, it really was.)

Or, as Androider said, put it in the break room. Where I work, that's exactly what they did: there's a TV in the break room that's on all the time, so for world cup it was tuned to that. No problem: if you want to watch it for a few minutes, go do it in the break room. If you want to not be bothered while you work, don't hang out in the break room.

Drinking alcohol at work? Taking out the Mulled Wine on Friday afternoons around Christmas is not too uncommon.

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