For people to use ear buds or head phones at home or in the office

I use them on my office day some of the time. It stops people bothering me with anything other than important matters.

In my office it's code for DND, I'm concentrating.

Last job I wasn't allowed as I was working in a customers office and it was one of their rules.

Now I work at home and do because it's too quiet and unnerving after years in offices with background noise.

As long as they aren't loud that everybody can hear around them or preventing phones being answered I wouldn't really care.

we do need to talk sometimes without the look of stop disturbing me

You are disturbing them. They need to focus.
If you need to talk to them you can either wait for a moment when they aren't focusing on something else, or drop them an email asking when would be a good time to bend their ear to something for 10 minutes.

Don't you see that the other side of this coin is someone who is frustrated by the self-centred colleague who thinks her minor queries and updates are so important they can't possibly wait till they have met their deadline/finished their current task and are ready to change tracks to deal with some completely different priority.

Yes as a manager I never minded ear plugs/head phones for staff. That said, it wasn't a call centre type environment, each person had their own caseload so there was no issue around avoiding calls.

Because sometimes I want to get on with writing notes or referral without discussing what Tina did at the weekend or where Lesley’s grandkids are going on holiday.

Equally sometimes I just need 5 minutes to myself at home and sticking on a podcast and making the dinner is all I can do to avoid sensory overwhelm.

Agree. Open plan offices should work well but people do need to understand the etiquette and move away for long conversations etc

I sometimes wear them in the morning because otherwise I would be serving DH divorce papers before he'd got half way through his breakfast

Yes the only reason the people who sit behind me haven't met a grisly and painful death is because I use ear plugs to block out their idiotically inane chat.

If you must chat, at least chat about something interesting or, ideally, salacious. Not 8 hours of drivel about which bus you caught for work and whether you have one slice of cheese or two in your sandwiches today

I started wearing them because I had a colleague who slurped his tea and ate breakfast & lunch at his desk, chewing with his mouth open. The noise was nauseating.

Yes you are. Every person and every job is different.

well, the existence of some
inconsiderate people in open plan offices rather than open plan offices per se

i have always had a great experience of open plan offices and much prefer to lots of little offices

Open plan offices are the problem.

We all wear a single earpiece as that’s how we answer work calls, no one has had a physical telephone on their desk in years! So it’s the same when wfh home unless there is no one around, and no background noise, which cannot be guaranteed with neighbours etc. Plus if wfh and the doorbell goes (say), if I’m wearing an earpiece I don’t have to pause the call to go and answer it. In between yes I listen to music, as do my colleagues. I switch it off or take off earpiece when a colleague comes over. Not exactly a hardship! And yeah, interrupting me when I’m wfh is enraging unless it’s an emergency as my work is time critical, and an interruption can really slow me down as need time then to get back into the flow of what I’m doing.

Yeah we are only allowed them whilst sitting at our desks. We’re not allowed to wear them walking around, we’re also not allowed to text or be on the phone whilst walking. We have to stop and stand to the side. Health and safety rules for the whole site inside and outside of the building until we leave.

Research shows it takes 20 minutes to get fully back into a task once interrupted. They improve productivity - something employers are keen on.

Listening to music whilst working was forbidden in my work place pre pandemic. Those dealing directly with customers (it’s an academic faculty) aren’t permitted to wear headphones.

Personally, I think it’s a bit dangerous for maintenance and book fetching or book moving library staff to wear them but some do.

In our office no one does except for online meetings on Teams. We did have one staff member who did a while ago and it was a bit unfriendly, I sat next to her but felt the didn’t really know her. She used to wear them even when she was in direct online helpdesk queries. Whilst that’s not talking directly as in face to face it is just about a live chat as in messaging so I don’t think it was really a good idea to be listening to pop tracks at the same time.

On the other hand, another colleague says listening to podcasts is the only way she can bear being in same office as the chap that sits nearest to her. She kind of has a point 🤣

My DH seems not to hear or remember about 95% of what I say, if he was wearing ear buds that would at least give him an excuse! 🤣

Open plan office with staff who are loud and never stop talking (and the place has fucking awful acoustics). I quite often have airpods in running just noise cancellation if I need to concentrate on something. Can hear/see my phone ringing just fine, can hear if someone's talking to me - but I don't have to hear the completely unrelated service at the other side of the office discussing who snogged who on Love Island last night.

It's actually a reasonable adjustment for my autism that I'm OK to use them in the office (although anyone is as long as no one else can hear them - but I asked for it to be documented for just the sort of MN professionally pissed off at others type individuals that rear their heads occasionally).

I don't like them for this reason. DH wears them in the house all the time and I feel like I can't talk to him at all. It's very antisocial. (And I'm not a big talker, to address a pp)

I had to ban them because team members were using them to avoid taking their fair share of phone calls (integral part of the role).

The anti-social aspect wouldn't bother me, though.

I out mine in if I need to focus on something. I ask my colleagues if they need anything from me before I do and tel them to give me a wave if anything urgent crops up. Doesn't cause any issues. If someone wants to talk to me they Slack me, and if my phone rings it's right next to me on the desk so I can see it's ringing and answer it!

Even being in an office with one other person, I find it absolutely impossible to concentrate on my work. Noise cancelling headphones help a bit.

Thankfully when I do have to go to the office, most of the time I manage to secure private workspace.

I use mine in the office to signal to my lovely colleagues that I dont want to be bothered unless it’s important. It’s like closing my office door but I don’t have my own office.

i also find that putting them in triggers my brain to go into concentration mode. Sometimes!

I couldn't do my job or cope with being in an open plan office without wearing my ear buds