Office noise bothers some people more than others
I currently work for a startup and all three of us are hotdesking. We&#x27;re constantly moved to new spaces in the hotdesking space because a new company is leaving&#x2F;moving in. I&#x27;ve sat beside recruiters, property managers and salespeople.<p>There&#x27;s no &quot;quiet&quot; room. The meeting rooms cost a few hundred and need to be pre-booked.
My home environment isn&#x27;t a quiet refuge either. Beside a busy street, more flatmates than their should be and a room beside the kitchen which is used late in the night.<p>The only quiet I can wrangle is a few hours at a local library on weekends before the kids come in for the reading and writing sessions.<p>The noise has gotten bad enough that I&#x27;m considering quitting my job and running away to a small town.<p>Yes, you can use noise cancelling headphones but:<p>1. They&#x27;re uncomfortable for long periods<p>2. They don&#x27;t really block all the noise and you live in anxiety waiting for that one blaring ringtone to squeeze through<p>3. I find it difficult to concentrate with them on. It feels like a heavy, constricting object squeezing my temples.<p>No solutions, just a rant.<p>EDIT: Thinking about it some more on the transit to work this morning. I believe the constant battering to my senses has made me more irritable. I tend to avoid my flatmates and reply with dismissive grunts and hand waves. Ditto for people in the shared space. Small things upset me even more. A failed build pipeline or a new Jira request will infuriate me. I&#x27;ve been countering this with more breaks from the screen to take walks around the office block.