Everyone is different, but my ideal work environment is library quiet. No music and certainly no overheard conversations or people constantly walking past. I’ve never worked in an office that was willing to provide such an environment, but I have it at home.
The only people I've met who seem to like them are people who do sales for a living or the exact kind of coworkers who I would really not like to be in an open office with.
I have a really nice office in Seattle. Since I am the second most tenured person on the team, I even have a water view and am right next to the snacks. I haven't seen the inside of this office since May 2020, and probably never will again.
All of my colleagues and I have agreed that we don't see the need to go back and our employer is likely going to sell our admin building (we have several other buildings for actual patient services) and distribute some of the money to those of us who worked in that building as a bonus or as an allowance to buy equipment for home.
I've visited the open offices at friends who work for Microsoft and Google and they're just awful hives of noise. I would rather have my own door and own bathroom.
Can walk, get some exercise/sunshine, nap, even have a quickie with your partner or look at porn, etc. No matter how awesome one's office is, those things are generally not options.
And even if you bike to work that latter point still stands due to the passively homicidal assholes driving cars out there.
I get the occasional day off to go do things that don’t require brain. They only pay for bites of the donut with the jam in them.
It’s a net win for everybody.
Another colleague reused his earmuffs and earplugs from the gun range, but I think most of those are pretty uncomfortable.
Another colleague reused his earmuffs and earplugs
from the gun range, but I think most of those are
pretty uncomfortable.
Ideally, everybody struggling to work in an office would wear big, absurd earmuffs.
Maybe if management looked around and saw that 80% of their employees were geared up like they were working on the tarmac of a busy fucking airport just to get some work done, they would rethink the hell of open offices.
Nah. They wouldn't.