Whatever

I’ve always been told hearing worsens with age. I now have serious suspicions this is not true. I’m finding myself becoming increasingly interrupted by office noise. Not just the early-morning ‘how was your evening/weekend’ banter that is a pleasant part of social interaction, but the all-day inane conversations, fake phone chuckles, singing and alpha male boisterousness that seem to breed on my floor and drift my way without any derogation in volume. It’s got so bad I’ve actually started to question myself. I find myself asking – quietly – ‘Is it me?’. ‘Am I becoming less tolerant?’, ‘Am I a killjoy?’ ‘Is my communal compass spinning out of control?’ Happily for my sanity (or so my colleagues tell me), it is not only my problem. It is also a problem for them too. It is the environment in which we work. Sadly, for my sanity, I sense the issue will not go away. Upon deeper research, I find I’m not alone. A whopping one in three workers have apparently come close the resigning because of the irritating habits of their colleagues, according to Office Angels. Now, I’m not usually so tolerant of such fanciful-sounding claims, but this time I actually thinking this stat could be true. All of which poses one bigger question. Just when did it become acceptable for office ‘teams’ to be so raucous? Is this the way management theory and group dynamics is going? Human voices wouldn’t be so bad. It’s the fact my office noise is inexorably linked with ruler slapping, finger clicking, hand clapping, whooping, cheering, jeering, table thumping, foot tapping, finger drumming, and – and this really gets on my goat – keyboard bashing. These people attack (rather than caress) their keyboard, as if their existence depended on demonstrating that they’re typing. Alas, I fear regulation will not help me. A quick glance at the ‘Control of Noise at Work Regulations’ (last updated in 2005), shows employers must prevent staff from being exposed to 80dB over an eight hour period (equivalent to a tube train entering an underground station platform). This lower noise limit was reduced from 85dB, so things are slowly going in the right direction. But if anyone has ever researched lower-level, but continuous noise, and the impact it has on productivity, I’d gladly take a read of it. Open plan offices were once described as the office design of the future. Open to debate I think now.