People who wear earphones all of the time - AIBU?

[Pariswhenitdrizzles]

I find it really rude and annoying!! I see some people who wear their earphones ALL of the time - at work etc. - and, because they have them in the whole time, even when you're speaking with them, you can't even tell whether they're listening. I just find it really rude and impolite.

I wear them a lot both out and about and at work because I love music so very much. I can work and listen, it does not impact.my.work. out and about I could not give a rat's nadge whether anyone finds it rude. My ears, my life, my right to spend my precious little free time doing what I love 😏

At work I do only wear 1 in ear headphone. I am fully alert to what is going on around me but it helps drown out the crashing bores with no volume control and less to do than me.

I wear headphones all the time in the office and in many other public situations because I have terrible misophonia - i usually don't have music on, as I want to be able to hear and respond if someone wants my attention, but just having the headphones on helps block out some of the triggering noises.

Unfortunately for those of us who suffer from misophonia - and I believe there are a fair few of us- an office can be a really stressful place. People chewing loudly, tapping fingernails, breathing really loudly, sniffing, whistling...it can be an unbearable cacophony. Have some compassion!

I'm sure your not meaning to but it would be alot easier to acknowledge you don't know enough about others disability/medical needs but that they are valid. Your attitude hear whether you mean it to or not makes it come accross dismissive of this, and dismissive of the legal protections in place. There is a great deal of disabilism in the uk currently, alot isn't intentional imo but it comes about from not being willing to understand that others needs are just as valid as yours

I could understand you saying this if I said “I’d never ever let anyone, even** those with a disability, wear headphones” - but I have stated several times that I’ll worry about it if I ever have to employ someone with those needs, when I cross that bridge.

I was explaining how it frustrated me that the people in my team wore them when it’s so obvious it was important to stay alert at all times. I was telling my story, not generalising for everyone.

As far as I am aware there is no one on my team who requires headphones to work, as I described earlier it’s not that kind of environment. When they don’t have headphones I have a very efficient staff, with no obvious hindrances. I’m pretty sure anyone with sensory issues would not be so efficient in the noisy and constant environment We work in. I simply couldn’t allow headphones on the off chance someone may have a struggle they aren’t telling me about. The business would suffer, the onus really would be on the staff member to disclose any issues.

I disagree completely that I am snooty and rude about it. I’m note quite sure how anything I’ve said can be translated to that. I’ve been short with posters here but that’s because people seem to think they know my job without actually knowing me (and some have implied I’m lying that the team need to be in constant communication) and it’s fucking condescending

I used to work in an open plan office and it was hell. Idiots rambling on about last nights TV, idiots gossiping, idiots standing right next to you discussing a night out loudly when you are in the phone to a client, idiots on the phone to their Mum/partner/kids constantly. It makes it so hard to work.

I left that place and swore that if I could help it I’d never work in open plan again. Management banned us from wearing headphones.

Then I got my own office and now I wfh and the increase in productivity/decrease in distraction and stress is palpables.

So aybu? depends on the circumstances. Noise cancelling headphones in an office? Yes you are. Leaky tinny shit on a bus/in the office, yanbu.

You were very rude by saying you don't buy how anyone can need headphones to concentrate. Hence my sarcastic remarl in response about you sitting on your butt. You appear to have missed alot of what's said or how you come across. Maube awareness of that is not your strong point.

Do you really not realise how incredibley offensive it is to be told that you can't really need headphones to concentrate? You really can't see how disabilist you are being? Regardless of any worl set up you are not above the equalitues act bit you come accross as if you think you are. You clearly are lacking in disability awareness and can't see how offensive you are being. You can't possibley know how others disabilitues affect them or how aids help them access normal life. It was incredibley narcassitic comment to make and auite frankly if you think that whether or not you 'buy' that sone peoples disabilities require headphones to concentrate does abything other than add to the disabilist climate we live in then you are incrediey short sighted. The clique of if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the cause is apt here.

Cherry actually under the law it's not enough to say "I'll worry about it if I ever have to employ someone with additional needs" and "the onus is on employees to disclose".

Actually you have an anticipatory duty to make reasonable aduustments for diabled people. That means you have to rhink in asvance about what people with this protected characteristic might require.

Too many actuallies there but yoi get my drift.

FuckShit

I had to look back and check my comment then! I was actually referring to my team whose excuse was they need it to concentrate (they don’t, they were more embarrassed at being reprimanded) but I do see how this came across and I apologise. I didn’t mean to offend. I do understand why people with disabilities may need headphones. And I do not think I’m above the equalities act at all.

In my particular work environment, if someone had a sensory issue then I imagine it’s like someone in a physical job having a disability with (for example) their hand. That person would need to make their manager/OT/HR aware and then see how they could work around it. I know when I had a perforated ear drum last year and temporarily lost my hearing in one ear I struggled immensely at work. Obviously not comparable to a sensory issue but just a demonstration of how something like that can have such an effect

Actually you have an anticipatory duty to make reasonable aduustments for diabled people. That means you have to rhink in asvance about what people with this protected characteristic might require

For every single disability a person might have? Can you point me to the correct piece of legislation that states this please?

Another one who wears earphones at work in order to concentrate. Out of seven of us in our team, three of us do this in order to save our sanity. I listen to podcasts or Radio nan Gaidheil. We analyse huge amounts of data and are lumped into an open plan office with a noisy department. The managers up the line all know this and accept it. My boss sits two desks across, her manager comes to talk to me if he needs to. More senior management email or phone me. My hearing aid only goes back in when I go out of the office or to a meeting; oddly enough, I never have to take it out on the one day a week that I work in a different office in another town.

Cherrychasing do you work in the public sector ? It sounds like you might do.

I sometimes wear headphones at work. It's fairly normal in a lot of workplaces nowadays.

I work in retail and the amount of customers who come in and stand in front of me, look at me expectantly and then when I smile and say "Can I help you?" pull out an earphone and say "WHAT??" is off the scale.

Mate, YOU came into MY shop. It's not unreasonable to think that we may have to discourse a little before you decide what you want to buy.

If it pains you that much to interact with other humans then I have it on good authority that the internet is a huge place where you never have to talk to another soul, if that suits you better.

I work in a massive open plan office. We have a rule that people can listen to music, or podcasts, or whatever, but only one earphone can be worn. It works very well.

I wasnt aware I had to never wear ear phones just incase someone wants my attention. I didnt know I had to be at everyone's beck and call.

Bizarre.

Actually you have an anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.
For every single disability a person might have? Can you point me to the correct piece of legislation that states this please?

You need to have a read of this. It IS an anticipatory duty and you absolutely cannot have blanket policies that prohibit earphones unless you can show that their job cannot be done with them. You don't get to decide whether the need is genuine.
www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/employercode.pdf
It's disappointing that you are in a management position without having a good understanding of your legal duties under the Equality Act.

CherryChasingDotMuncher You are having a hard time here. I do a different job to you and it is a very benign regime where apart from very busy periods, we are mostly left to our own devices.

However, anyone who insisted on keeping their earphones in would be regarded as odd by their colleagues - my job is journalism. We are gregarious

Someone who couldn't work in a busy office or be robust enough to ask others to shush at sensitive moments would be managed out because it's not compatible with our work.

I once had someone ask me not to type so loudly

Someone who couldn't work in a busy office or be robust enough to ask others to shush at sensitive moments would be managed out because it's not compatible with our work.
And that approach may well fall foul of the discrimination laws if there is a genuine need for some people to wear them.

You wish VoiceOfReason , but in reality it happens. I am not opposed to people taking their employers to an industrial tribunal - I did and we settled on the steps.

But employment law is difficult. I said to my solicitor that they just couldn't do that to me because it was outrageous and he said: 'They can, but luckily for you they haven't done it right.'

In my particular job , if someone insisted on wearing headphones in order to blot out the normal sounds of an office, I would manage them out unless they were spectacularly good in another way.

I find it quite odd that people are treating wearing headphones like some kind of human right. Wouldn't the default not be to wear them unless you can prove you actually do need to, under the reasonable adjustment argument?
I do understand that it can be very hard for people to raise this and a climate of scoffing and disablism is not helpful to anyone.
But I don't think the numbers of people who are really attached to their headphones can all be needing to make such adjustments? Unless I'm wrong but it seems odd that there are so many people all of a sudden who need this.
There's plenty of things we would prefer to do/have at work but it's all a trade off isn't it. Wearing earphones (unless you need to OF COURSE) says to me "I'm more bothered about having a nice time at work myself than participating in a collaborative enterprise with others".

sorry unclear - "default to be not wearing them"

Someone who couldn't work in a busy office or be robust enough to ask others to shush at sensitive moments would be managed out because it's not compatible with our work

You can’t ask two hundred other people to shush five times a day. You expect background noise in an open plan but not someone stood by your desk going on about how pissed they were last night while you’re on the phone. Some people are just loud inconsiderate fuckers.

Open plan offices are shit for many types of work and very stressful for many types of people.

That is exactly what I'm talking about. Only there aren't 200 people in my office - if only we were that well-staffed - probably 50. There is a low level of conversation all the time and there are some loud people. Usually it's about work, but often it's about what people did last night because we're a friendly bunch and we like to chat with each other.

I don't need Trappist silence in order to work and neither do my colleagues. But if I was on the phone and someone was talking so loudly next to me that it was interfering, I'd ask the caller to wait a moment and then mouth: 'Do you mind?' What always happens is the person goes: 'Oops! Sorry!' and goes away. How difficult is it to do that? How often does it happen to you because I can't remember the last time I had to do it.

I find it bizarre that headphones are seen as the devil in an office. I do the work that I'm paid to do to a high standard, I interact with my colleagues, answer the telephone or make calls, have conversations in appropriate places. If I need to talk to my colleagues in depth we go to an empty meeting room. Chit-chat is either in the kitchen or kept very low level. Personal calls are made in the lift foyer where the loos and stairs are. I don't need to make constant telephone calls like the general office, I don't need to have conversations with several people in the general area.

I just get on with my bloody work - with the assistance of headphones to concentrate. I had to do this at uni too, in loud and echoing halls of residence. Frankly, my work wouldn't be as good if I had a closed mind manager who insisted that I had constant audio distraction, just like those people who keep the TV on all the time so you can't have a proper conversation.