Also, not everyone is the same.  I welcome collaboration, but when I'm working on my own, I need the isolation.<p>I don't spend all my time in isolation.  But I need to be able to shut the door and make the rest of the world go away.  After a while, I'll open it and come back out.<p>The worst is tuning out crap taking place 3 - 5 feet away from me, in which I have no part.  All the more so when it is fellow employees socializing, while I'm trying to get stuff done and maybe waiting on work from them, as well.<p>And I agree, when the background noise becomes a din with little in the way of distinguishable, coherent threads, that's a lot better for me than a conversation or two, each of which is largely or completely intelligible (if not always intelligent).