My last job I worked in the basement of a college dormitory. During the summer, it didn’t house college students, but kids and adults who were on campus for various seminars and camps. From mid May to early August, every week 350 girls attended a weekly basketball camp. Every Friday of those weeks, the girls were given a brand new basketball to take home. Every Friday at 2:30 of those weeks, 350 girls would walk along the terrazzo tile walkway over our heads bouncing those basketballs. That’s 50 yards. And they weren’t running. Four summers.
I’ve been in this office for twenty plus years. It’s been reconfigured about a dozen times. When I got here, there were 11 of us and we had make-shift cubes using chalk boards, book cases, and filing cabinets. They’d all just been yanked out of their three person offices with doors and put in a large room. They were very unhappy about it, but the problem was too many people not doing enough work and NOT getting along.
About six months later, we got real cubes. So I’ve been in one configuration or another of these cubes in one large office for a couple of decades. The room itself is about 60% of its original size. There are only 7 of us in the big room with two upper management offices with doors on one side. I take an interview room if I need to make a private call. Or take my cell phone outside.
Headphones are not an option most of the time since you’re always on the phone and people are in and out of the office asking questions all day. We DO hear each other’s phone calls and we DO interact with each other based on that: “Were you talking to Allied? I was dealing with the same problem last week and I had to…” or “Crap! Check your caller ID. Manistar is cold calling!” If we play music, most of us have a radio or phone streaming at low volume. Earphones when it’s quieter in the afternoon. Everyone who is hired knows this up front. If you can’t deal with everyone up in your business (business business, not personal business), then this is not the job for you. It’s not the place or the job for people who need absolute peace and quiet.