To hate open-plan working?!

[treacletree]

Does anyone else hate open plan offices? I don’t understand why companies seem to think they are such a great idea. I work on a very large open plan floor and I can hear people around chatting, eating, typing so loud, having standup meetings all day and I find it makes me feel very on edge and it is hard to concentrate. My job frequently involves long stints of working with complex spreadsheets and I find it so hard in this environment. I get so anxious (or something) that I often need to go and sit in a meeting room for a few minutes to feel like I can breathe and not jsut be constantly on show.
Now I have long suspected that I may be autistic (although I’m pretty high functioning and mask very well), I guess I want to know if other people cope fine with open plan. I suspect my reaction is pretty extreme. I enjoy my work and when the office is quieter I find it much easier to get things done, but at the moment we are near capacity and pretty much every day I just want to escape to a room on my own.
Aibu??

I might be in the minority here, but I'd say that 90% of the time, working in an open plan office really doesn't bother me. I can concentrate on what I'm doing with no issues.

I work in an open plan office, a large one. It's not too bad, some noise but in general everyone is respectful of each other.

I totally understand how you feel,...You might have Misophobia.......Open plan offices are not ideal for people with Misophobia...Ear phones help if you can wear them. I think all workspaces should have a rule that people cannot eat at desk.

Christ no, you aren’t even remotely being unreasonable!

The overwhelming feeling of dread and nausea that washes over me in crowds and busy, noisy places is the worst. Open-plan offices, particularly call centres seem to be about a million times worse than this; I worked for the 111 service as a Clinician a few years ago, and the environment made me so physically and psychologically ill I had to leave.

I cannot stand working in an open plan environment due to the above, and have turned down roles due to permanent shared or open plan offices; I share an office one day a week with another clinician at the moment and she drives me to fucking distraction with her noises and habits (which are all perfectly normal, it’s me that has issues!).

My two days a week that I work from home in absolute solitude save for calling my clients/patients is absolute bliss, the tranquility I feel from not being highly alert to crisp packets, shouting, general talking, nervous coughs etc is immeasurable. I’m fairly certain that I’m just a tiny bit messed up to feel like this though as my friends all think I must be “terribly lonely on my own two days a week”.

I will caveat the above with the fact I have lots of autistic traits and behaviours but have never sought a diagnosis at my age, and ADD wouldn’t be a surprise either.

I have my own office now but in my last job, I had to share with either my boss (sitting behind me) or in a huge open plan office with forty other people (hot desking). I hated both. Absolutely impossible to concentrate if you have to 'create' content and therefore think often as there were too many distractions.

It's great for the loud, outgoing, chatty types as it motivates and enthuses them. Sadly, for the quieter, introverts, it's absolute hell as you can't hear yourself think over the din of phones, chatting, copier machine, doors slamming, thudding footsteps, chairs creaking, drawers being opened and closed, people sighing, eating, sneezing, coughing, yawning ...

I'd get noise cancelling headphones and a big sign that says 'fuck off.'

Do you not own a bag?

I do, but given I would never normally take it to the toilet with me, I've previously considered taking a bag with me as akin to shouting "I'VE GOT MY PERIOD" as I go. (No, I don't normally notice if anyone else takes a bag with them. I will consider trialling this bag-carrying concept)

Without exception, the people who judge others in their appearance in my workplace are the women. The men simply do not care.

They do where I work. My place is 90-95% female and the blokes who do work there are... unthreatening, let's say. And the comments that they make are not offensive as such. So I would feel a bit silly saying anything either to them or to management about it. Although I did stop wearing one (rather unexciting) dress after I realised one bloke was commenting on it every single fucking time I wore it*.

A colleague once told one of them to pack it in, and he literally * * cried to management.

**It was Boden's dullest.

• • *Yes, literally.

I hate my open plan office. I wear noise cancelling headphones and I have a large "Do not Disturb" sign at the end of my desk. If anyone approaches and makes eye contact, I point to the sign and turn away.

I know the feeling :I have the opposite problem though people are too damn quiet in my office! You eat an apome/ scrunch a paper or whatever and everyone stares

PanamaPattie

^^

Fabulous

It depends on the office and the layout. I spent a couple of years working in an open plan office where we were so tightly packed together that when we were seated, the backs of our chairs were up against the backs of the chairs of our colleagues behind, so any movement at all impacted the other person. We had hundreds of incoming phone calls per day and struggled to hear properly due to the noise. The stress, headaches etc and eventually sick leave went through the roof.

I work in an open plan office now and my colleagues are really quite far away. We have plenty of space and can't see each other's screens, the office is quiet and it's all fine.

Absolutely despise them. Would only accept a job in an open plan office if I was desperate. Even cubicles are a huge improvement. I need to feel like I’m not on display. The constant fight or flight of being in a crowd, worrying that you can’t scratch an itch. It’s awful.

Plus my job requires laser focus. Thankfully my company understands that and everyone in my division has an office with a door, even if it is a very small office.

Glad to hear it’s not just me. That fight or flight thing a pp said definitely describes it- I feel constantly on show and like I’m always in a crowd. I find that in order to go into the concentration I need to get certain work done in this environment , I go into kind of hyperfocus which feels to me like maybe an autistic thing but I can focus on one thing for hours and hours on end without going to the toilet or eating/drinking, and it’s a very productive state but it leaves me incredibly mentally and physically drained and I then need to “recover” for days after. Did this on Friday for about 6 hours and have been drained since then, today I have been usuals as trying to get back into the task has left me feeling really anxious and frozen. When I work from home I don’t have this need to go into hyper focus. I know I am probably extreme, and a lot of this is related to personal issues, but the open plan setting jsut seems to make things worse for me. I want to work from home more or come up with adjustments like working from a breakout pod but in my team this is seen as slacking.
I feel so unhappy at work on days like this. I’m good at my job, that’s what kills me. But my last 3 jobs over 10 years have been in open plan offices and it seems to be the done thing now.

*useless, not usuals

I sit alone in a office all day long and I'm so lonely and isolated. I hate loud loud people ut I hate being alone all the time even more.

Constant emails – they don’t affect anyone other than the recipient
Constant Skype/Lync messages – as above
Skype calls from colleagues – we don’t have Skype conversations in the open plan office
Meeting notifications and an update for every tiny change – these make no sound
Microsoft Teams - these make no sound
Desk phones – not intrusive where I work
Mobile messages – we have to turn the sound off our mobiles at work
WhatsApp - we have to turn the sound off our mobiles at work
LinkedIn messages – not an issue

StreetwiseHercules wouldn’t you get most of the above interruptions if you worked from home as well?
From reading about everyone’s experiences in an open plane office it just sounds like they are badly managed and peopled with inconsiderate arseholes. We have about 20 people in my office, and if anyone is too loud or irritating they get asked to pipe down and behave. We are all considerate of each other – people don’t shout across the office, eat smelly food, judge what you wear or bully each other. We just get on with our work, and if we want to talk to each other we talk quietly.

We are on a cost cutting drive at work at the moment and only senior management get individual offices.

If anyone approaches and makes eye contact, I point to the sign and turn away.

Wow. That’s a bit rude. Do people have to email you to make an appointment to talk to you about something work related at work PanamaPattie?

I mean the culture of constant interruption. The electronic stuff can be managed to a degree but combined with the open plan office environment it can be hard for a lot of people to concentrate and/or get work done. And that causes stress.

Open plan is brilliant for extroverts, i.e. people who are energised by other people and do their best work in buzzy environments. Open plan is an absolute nightmare for introverts, i.e. those who need silence to concentrate and do their best work. I find it so baffling that companies opt for open plan but totally disregard the personalities of their staff. If I were a boss with an open plan office, I would make all job candidates take a personality test and only offer jobs to the extroverts.

I left my previous law firm when it went open plan; now work for a firm where there are one or two lawyers to an office. I get so much more done and how lovely to have a bookcase again.

“ Do people have to email you to make an appointment to talk to you about something work related at work ”

Would that be so bad? Why is it expected now that it’s ok to just interrupt people who are trying to work?

I don't think it's rude. I'm busy concentrating and I don't want to be interrupted by someone waffling about bloody Brexit or Strictly. I resorted to the sign after I realised that I was reading the same paragraphs again and again as I kept losing my thread. I didn't want to move to an open plan office. I said it would be a disaster, but it's all about saving money - not the comfort of the hard working teams thrown together with nothing in common. My calendar is freely shared. Make an appointment, buy me a coffee and I'd be happy to talk.

For cost cutting, my company is introducing hot-desking. To be assigned a permanent office you need to work in the office a certain percentage of the time. The percentage depends on your role and the building you work in. The remainder check out OFFICES as needed. There is an online reservation system, the company directory automatically updates to tell you where everyone is sitting, and there are signs on the doors that automatically update to indicate who has the office that day. You can reserve up to 5 days in a row in the same space without talking to the concierge, who can make exceptions for special circumstances and is also always available to deal with any issues that arise.

So it is possible to give people privacy to work and minimize square footage, companies just don’t care about worker’s mental and physical health, both of which have been shown to be negatively impacted by open plan offices.

It's not the open plan hubbub that is always the problem; it's the interruptions from other staff.

In my office of 6, if the phone rang for someone else, Reception would then ring each person's phone until someone answered to ask a question that did not concern them.

If someone came in looking for Jenny, and Jenny wasn't at her desk, they would stand and chat for however long it took for Jenny to return.

If someone was having a bad day (often, emotionally charged job) you couldn't just ignore them no matter how much work you had to do yourself.

I really liked and cared about my colleagues but I bloody hated that office.

Yanbu, I'm in an office with only 7 people and it's still too noisy for me! especially when my boss gets talking about the rugby...When it gets too much I put my headphones on and listen to something of my choice, is that an option for you?

I've left jobs because they were in open plan offices so yadnbu op.

yanbu i find it barbaric and will potentially write off a workplace entirely based on this. don't even get me started on hot desking. perfect example of being an introvert or HSP living in the extrovert world.

There are a lot of introverts on here.

One of the girls I work with is very much an introvert and keeps herself to herself, but we all know and understand so we leave her alone. I only talk to her if it is a pressing work matter.

Why are so many managers allowing their staff to be so noisy? If our office was really noise I know our HOD would have something to say.