> "In general, if it's coming from another person, it's much more disturbing than when it's coming from a machine," he says
Huh. My most pet peeve in the open office floorplan was always the coworkers whose phone — not on vibrate — would start ringing. They'd look at it, decide not to answer it, and proceed to just let it ring out loud until it hits voicemail. Just… why? And attempts to educate the owner on how to silence a ringer¹ just seem to go unheeded.
One commenter I read once noted the concept of "cell phone time out" — a basket with a blanket for ringing phones with no owner to be found.
My current office boasted "great amounts of natural light"; I have exactly zero paths to natural light from my desk. (The upshot of this is that we're in a corner that largely isolates us from the noise.) While I lean towards cubes (simply for the affordance of quiet and disease prevention), do they not mean that people in them get absolutely no natural light? (Not that I am right now myself, but it crosses my mind.)
We recently lost a manweek to a cold that just ran absolutely rampant through the desks. Perhaps the sad thing is that I feel that was pretty good, and could have been much worse. (Perhaps because I seem to have dodged it myself.)
Our new office came with less conference rooms and quiet areas. Less actual useable space per person.
¹And just in case you're wondering: squeezing nearly any cell phone's power/volume buttons will silence the ringer during an incoming call. It doesn't cancel the call or voicemail it: the other end is still listening to a ringtone. You can still pick up with call with the on-screen UI if you want. (At least until it truly goes to voicemail, which happens after the normal delay.) You can even do this with the phone in the pocket pretty easily, e.g., if it rings inconveniently during an important meeting.
Huh. My most pet peeve in the open office floorplan was always the coworkers whose phone — not on vibrate — would start ringing. They'd look at it, decide not to answer it, and proceed to just let it ring out loud until it hits voicemail. Just… why? And attempts to educate the owner on how to silence a ringer¹ just seem to go unheeded.
One commenter I read once noted the concept of "cell phone time out" — a basket with a blanket for ringing phones with no owner to be found.
My current office boasted "great amounts of natural light"; I have exactly zero paths to natural light from my desk. (The upshot of this is that we're in a corner that largely isolates us from the noise.) While I lean towards cubes (simply for the affordance of quiet and disease prevention), do they not mean that people in them get absolutely no natural light? (Not that I am right now myself, but it crosses my mind.)
We recently lost a manweek to a cold that just ran absolutely rampant through the desks. Perhaps the sad thing is that I feel that was pretty good, and could have been much worse. (Perhaps because I seem to have dodged it myself.)
Our new office came with less conference rooms and quiet areas. Less actual useable space per person.
¹And just in case you're wondering: squeezing nearly any cell phone's power/volume buttons will silence the ringer during an incoming call. It doesn't cancel the call or voicemail it: the other end is still listening to a ringtone. You can still pick up with call with the on-screen UI if you want. (At least until it truly goes to voicemail, which happens after the normal delay.) You can even do this with the phone in the pocket pretty easily, e.g., if it rings inconveniently during an important meeting.