Cubicle noise pollution

"Avoid loud and aggressive people, they are vexations to the spirit."

— “Desiderata”

Our office has an open workspace in what you can call a co-working environment. There’re about five to six workstations in one bay, enough to fit the dual-monitor desktop, CPU tower and an Avaya IP phone, separated only by partitions measuring about 15-18 inches. Because of this, any noise emanating from a source within a few meters can be heard clearly by anybody within a certain radius.

Noisy coworkers are getting less easy to tolerate for me these days. While the thought crossed my head many times, I deduced that my dwindling patience for them is not because I’m getting old or I’m manifesting symptoms of anxiety, but more because of their lack of common courtesy.

I don’t think they realize that the noise they create can be very stressful for someone who’s just trying to get his or her work done. Their blathering is loud enough that even if you try to drown the noise by wearing earphones, you’ll hear them anyway. You’d think that modulate is a word that’s either alien or omitted in their vocabulary; no deadpan stares or even judging glares would make them lower the volume a notch. If for anything, perhaps they interpret these disapproving gaze for amusement or admiration because the more you look at them, the louder they get.

I always thought that we should all behave a certain way in the office. After all, we’re no longer in school, so we have to conduct ourselves professionally. This includes not talking loudly (especially in vernacular) or engaging in banal chatter. Nobody is asking them for absolute silence, just none of the excessive chit-chat that can already cause disruption to others who are working.

It baffles me how one person can produce noise equivalent to ten people. Imagine multiplying that to two more talking at the same time and volume. The resulting aggravation multiplies logarithmically as well.

I guess for most of them, talking in an obtrusive volume gives them the illusion of importance. But we all know the truth—empty vessels make the most noise. I think they are simply desperate for attention and they don’t care if they get it through notoriety.

By nature, humans are more attuned to man-made sounds which make ignoring noisy officemates nearly impossible. Loud chatter draws the attention away from the task at hand because it ruins one’s focus. Tell me—how can you reply to a business e-mail when you can hear them talking about what happened to last night’s teleserye?

As they are colleagues within the same pay grade, I can’t just tell them to pipe down. People, in general—don’t like being told what to do especially by someone of the same rank. Besides, some of these human bullhorns can’t tell the difference between another person asking them politely from being confrontational (they’d always think it’s the latter). On the other hand, it’s hard not be passive-aggressive when they have pressed all the wrong buttons already. In the end, most of us affected had no choice but to take the high road and ignore it altogether than be seen as the suck-up killjoy office whiner.

What’s frustrating is how we can’t count on their direct superiors to call their attention as they are sometimes the instigators. Reporting it during FGDs and townhall meetings proved to be futile too.

Frankly, I don’t see this issue getting resolved anytime soon because it’s more of an issue on employee behavior than effective enforcement of office rules and work etiquette. If the loud talker doesn’t see anything wrong with what he or she is doing, they’d simply think there’s nothing to change or adjust.

I suddenly thought about how we were in school as little kids—the embarrassment of seeing your name written on the blackboard under “Noisy” for everyone to see—is enough to shut you up.