Apparently I type too loudly

[Tabsicle]

So, I work in an office. Normal open plan.

Apparently one of my colleagues has put in a complaint about me. She says I type too loudly. I do, to be fair, type quickly (90 wpm) and that means I tend to bounce around the keyboard rapidly, and other people have said I type as if I'm in a bad mood (I'm not. I just type at thinking speed).

Nothing else - I don't eat at my desk, I don't really talk much, I don't wear heavy perfume. My boss has been very nice about it and said I'm doing nothing wrong but would it be OK to get me a quieter keyboard, and if that doesn't work, colleague will have to live with it.

AIBU in how I type? Is she? This feels really petty and while I know we don't get on (she's been really ratty and competitive with me recently, which I think it because we work in a target based environment and I've had some very good results lately) I'm a bit thrown that she has actually put in a formal complaint. It seems rather weird too. MN jury?

There's nothing you can do about your typing style, it's purely instinctive. I've been involved in psychometric testing trying to identify how fast typists type as fast as we do, and there have been no clear answers that I know of. I did 127wpm at my fastest on a 10 minute test. You could ask for a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX brown switches, these are the quietest of the mechanical keyswitches. They're whisper-quiet and the build of a mechanical keyboard helps keep the noise down well below the sound of the average £10 plastic keyboard. The mechanical keyboard will support and encourage faster accurate typing; at 90wpm you have to be a touch typist.

Put a pad underneath the keyboard to help buffer the noise, but your colleague will just have to put up with it; if you're typing quickly you can't be doing anything wrong not even if you were in a bit of a temper! See if your employer will fork out £120 for a Filco Majestouch Ninja keyboard, mechanical keyboards are expensive but it will last 20 years, individual switches can be replaced if necessary, it only takes seconds to do. The Ninja variation of the Filcos will impress your colleagues, the characters are on the front of the keys, the tops are blank.

If she still complains you could always bash her over the head with it, the chassis is steel, it's built like a brick outhouse. I have one of these with the Cherry blue switches, the loud clicky ones, I love it. Mechanical keyboards don't cause RSI problems, either.

I have a colleague who is a keyboard basher. He's had his keyboard replaced with a soft touch keyboard and a he now has a rubber mat under his keyboard. It's helped reduce the noise a lot (but he's still a basher 😆!)

This is part and parcel of working in an open plan office I'm afraid. Maybe management want to consider giving you your own office? Your boss has suggested constructive solutions but the bottom line is that your colleague is being ridiculous.

tabbymog

great post

OP, I think your manager has handled this deftly. I bet moaning colleague has form for being difficult. So manager acts swiftly to find a solution: moaning people NEVER want answers, they want to carry on moaning. (Here's an example, my moaning colleague brought some food into our office recently and left it out, birthday cake stylee, for those of us who might not dislike it. She was laughably furious because, predictably, people ate it, enjoyed it and thanked her )

I'm a quick typist, of your vintage. Of all my qualifications (degree, law conversion, Law Society Finals, lots of leisure things like sailing), and aside from passing my driving test, the outstandingly most useful one is the touch typing certificate I got at night school.

Soft keyboard will make a huge difference and will also be easier on your hands: typing like your typing a typewriter can't be good for you (especially at our advanced age )

I type extremely quickly but very quietly. My colleague types similarly quickly but like she wants all keyboards to die. I have misophonia so it makes me want to cry but then so does Miss Sniff in the other corner. Mostly, I accept it's my problem and wear earplugs but you can type quickly and quietly if you try. It's up to you whether you want to try though.

Certainly try a quieter keyboard if it is provided for you. If it makes no difference to you, then hit the keys less hard. But don't make changes that affect your productivity because one of your office colleagues hasn't developed their resilience to a noisy office environment.

Sorry I haven't RTFT. I am like you OP I type at 101 wpm and to be honest it can be a bit annoying in noise but at end of the day when I was working as a paralegal and touch typing and stuff people had to hush suck it up.

If you type fats it does make a noise but I wouldn't be adjusting my workload to take double the time because someone can't stand typing noises in an office she has to suck it up.

As for the formal complaint she is a probably jealous of you meeting all your targets because this is not normal behaviour to complain your typing too loud that's just crazy.

Keep typing don't make your work longer than your need to be I don't think this is a reasonable request.

The open plan office I spend most time in has a very fast and rattley typist (annoying but blankable with headphones), a desk shaking fidgeter (avoidable as long as they don't come in after your settled) and a Very Loud Person who spends 90% of the time on the phone, doesn't believe in headsets and appears to think they could be the next Brian Blessed. Can you tell which one irritates me most?

Seriously though OP, if people are saying it sounds like you're angry when you type at least try a quieter keyboard

Where I used to work there was a group of secretaries and the head one complained thsat everyone was being too loud when they typed and it affected her hangover......

tigerdriverll

My Mum taught me to touch type on an ancient sit-up-and-beg Imperial, one of those tanks with little, flat, round glass key tops and a rail at the back for putting the tab stops on, when I could find the tab plates. She stuck bits of paper on the key tops so I had to learn where they all were. I'd shred a cuticle every time I missed a key. Like you, it's the most useful skill I ever learned.

I love a good bash of the keys. How else would people get that you're pissed off

I kept my nails trimmed right down when I worked in an office. The click used to drive me mad when they reached a certain length. And people could tell when I was cross because I'd hit the keys a little harder.

That said, your manager clearly has the measure of your colleague by offering a solution and then saying she'll have to lump it. Your productivity is clearly worth more than her irritation.

The average typing speed has dropped since they stopped teaching Pitmans Typing in schools. If you can type at 90wpm you could probably turn up to work dressed like Ronald Mcdonald and sing off key all day, and your boss would give you a watery smile and hide in his office.

Disclaimer; I am prone to exaggeration.

Surely the sounds of typing are just part of the background noise of being in an office!!

I can't say that the volume of someone's typing is anything I have ever even noticed. I didn't know it was even a thing, but perhaps i am just spectacularly unobservant. 😎

I didn't know it was a thing either until someone said that she could still hear me above her headphones.

I put something under the keyboard and she moved onto another role on a different floor a few months later.

I have to say, if this complaint was levelled at me I'd have a problem with the manager who forwarded it, not the person who made the complaint. Surely it's a manager's job to er........ manage this type of complaint , recognize that it's petty and ask the person complaining to try and think of a solution?

There's a lot of "titfer" danger here, I can't believe that this hasnt been batted out of the park before it got to you OP

You must be near perfect at work, OP, if this is all your colleague can come up with to complain about.

I'm a loud typist but find typing with the pads rather than tips of my fingers helps.

Your colleague is a loon, OP.

Where I work, we have the following irritants:

1. the loud, fast, angry-sounding typist (very slightly irritating)

1. the person who will never need a megaphone (a bit more irritating)

1. the person who sends absurdly long-winded texts, with the keypad tones turned up to 11 (definitely irritating)

1. the area manager who constantly hums to herself in a kind of tuneless drone (so fucking irritating that if one of us lost it one day and killed her, we'd probably only get a couple of years on grounds of being subjected to extreme provocation)

When anyone complains about anyone else being noisy, they get told to listen to music on their phone and drown it out!

I just know in my bones that once this noisy-typing complaint has been dealt with satisfactorily the colleague is going to come up with something else.

I'll take bets on how long it will be.

My husband types really quickly and loudly. It's incredibly annoying.
We both work from home and sometimes I have to leave the room as it's so irritating.
If he's typing at night in bed on his laptop, it's sometimes so loud and intrusive it wakes me and our co-sleeping daughter.

Sorry, yes, YABU :(

Someone I sat next to in my previous job had an old keyboard and used to bang the keys really hard. As they were doing a job which required them to type pretty much all day, it sent me nearly spare. I dealt with it by tipping some water into the keyboard so that it got replaced by a new and quieter one.

Loud typing would drive me mad I'd have to say.

But I can't imagine going as far as making a formal complaint!

Imagine how annoying it must've been in the old days when people used typewriters especially with all that annoying dinging! What was the dinging for?

Wasn't dinging carriage return (showing my age here).

Making a formal complaint is massively OTT, I think.

I just googled the ding.

Apparently, it was to let you know you were nearing the end of a line.

It's been so long, I can't remember! I went to typing classes as a teenager and that was electronic typewriters where what you typed appeared in a little screen and you hit return to commit it to paper. This was the late 80s though and there were still a few manual typewriters knocking around at the same time as some companies were introducing PCs with WordPerfect!