Called aside in the office today...

[whatty]

I work in London in a hub office (many businesses under common ownership using the same space) in a senior role (I am female in my 40s). It is a hot desking set up- sit where you like when you come in. Some areas in the office have music playing & some don't (some context!).

At the end of my day today, a senior male colleague (50s) from another business asked to have a word with me. I have met him a few times at sessions where the businesses have been collaborating/ doing leadership workshops. He didn't remember me, so introduced himself.

He then proceeded to tell me that as I had been on calls all day (11.30-6.30 with a short lunch break) that I had been distracting people around me, and "many" people (from his area of the business) had reached out to him mention that they had found me distracting. For info- I had a headset on, and was working with colleagues on budget documentation & talking to my team re: work they were tackling.

He recommended that I use a pod/ room in future if I was going to be on lots of calls. I questioned whether there was a policy re: working in silence/ being a silent space- and he admitted that it was just different approaches to working, and that the team he works in tends to avoid being on calls in the open plan. He then said he hoped that this conversation would be taken in the way in which it was intended. I was confused to be honest- so I said it wasn't clear how it was meant. But that I'd consider his feedback.

When we left the room where we had his conversation, it was clear that those from his business around me were all aware that I was being "pulled aside".

I was livid if I'm being honest- and upset too. I am really busy at work, have been doing long hours, and felt that he had no right to tell me what to do in a shared office space. I accept that I am tired and emotional though, so perhaps should just leave it and move on. However- I also feel like he wouldn't have had that conversation with me if I was male. And that I wouldn't be unreasonable to pull him aside/ talk to him when I next encounter him with some measured feedback of my own.

What do you think? Would I be unreasonable to stew on this- and think up some direct home truths? Or should I keep quiet in the office and on the feedback front. TIA for any guidance you can offer!

@C8H10N4O2 The problem is with the office set up - its quite possible within large shared offices to allocate one floor or zone as a "quiet zone" or for "marketing' or whatever and to set them up to minimise impact of noise. It just requires office management.

That's really no different though, at the crux of it a quiet area or pod both rely on the user making the choice to be considerate of others. That is what OP's problem is.
If there was a quiet area it doesn't seem any more likely that she would avoid it.

Well done for taking all our comments on board so gracefully! Do the same at the hub and you'll be fine.

On the 'miserable to come in and sit in a cupboard' point, again, it's a mismatch in what works for different people. You appreciate having your quiet colleagues as pleasant wallpaper for your busy day of calls; however what they get is day-long noise and distraction!

Open plan offices are fucking hell (especially for me - I'm autistic and sound sensitive). One base I work out of has moved into a lovely nice shiny new open plan building and it's so bloody awful I avoided working out of it as much as humanely possible. That one has those stupid "pods" - but for 1 hour only, with a booking system that is like solving a bloody escape room puzzle to get into them, and woe betide you if you go a second beyond 59 minutes.

It's something that we've not managed as a society to get a solution to yet. Then again, I don't think we've managed to ever solve loud and annoying office colleagues in general.

OP was being unreasonable in her use of the workspace. I am genuinely interested in what you think would have been the correct way for the manager to deal with this, given that his team were directing their complaints to him.

Well most people on here are utterly wrong!

The way he approached the op was a chauvinistic power move!

You work in a shared space talking is excepted and music was being played. That is distracting!

If you need quiet stay at home or book a damn cupboard to be by yourself.

Its not the op but those I need quiet in a noisy by design space that need to work in a cupboard.

There could also be a case made for the music being played not being legal if they didn’t have a business license to do so. Just saying.

The office/pod sounds like a good idea. It can be intensely irritating listening to half a conversation for hours and hours. He handled it professionally, politely, it’s just part of sharing space.

The way he approached the op was a chauvinistic power move!

In that case, I'll have to let my boss know that when SHE had to pull out a colleague to have exactly the same chat, she was being chauvinistic.

Seriously, you're being ridiculous.

Oh for goodness' sake!

@Platypuslover Well most people on here are utterly wrong!

If you go around thinking everyone but you is wrong...it probably is you!

I’d be interested to know this, too.

Pre covid would have been normal but now most people are used to being somewhere not overheard and retreat to pods ime.

Hmmm, having worked in a cramped open plan office in The NHS for many years where many of us had hours of client telephone appointments, meetings with students in one corner of office, office conversations etc all the time, I find this "requiring a pod" a bit OTT to be honest!! We always managed fine! However I guess if there are discreet places to sit away from main office than fair enough but I almost laughed at what I see as a non issue really and do get why you felt a bit annoyed!

Pre-Covid it was normal to undertake nearly seven hours of conference calls in an open-plan office? My professional life has been spent in the education sector rather than business so I can’t claim any expertise but I do question this assertion.

I used to work in a large open plan office. Everyone was on the phone all the time - as there were lots of people, it was just a sort of low level general buzz. I couldn't work out why, when I moved to working in a remote working location, the noise of other people's phone calls was so annoying and, I assumed, so were my calls.

A friend, who works in building management told me it's all to do with dividers. In permanent offices, they have those dividers between desks. Apparently, at the bank she worked at, they'd actually invested in research regarding the ideal height of these - high enough to stop sound being annoying, low enough to still encourage collaboration!

It's a long way round of saying that I suspect you were being very annoying, without meaning to be, and it was totally reasonable too uggest you go work somewhere else or take calls somewhere else.

Meh. It was unacceptable and distracting before. I've had discussions with people walking around making calls and stopping behind my desk. At ties when I'm working on budgets in 3 spreadsheets on 2 monitors it is unbearable.

And I have always told them to go away.

Nowadays hopefully people understand how to work in shared offices

This is why I think hot-desking is ridiculous. Because you're coming into the office to be able to engage with colleagues etc... but half the time you're not even sitting with your team or people you know or will benefit from engaging with.

Then you need to look for a new job if open sexual inequality is in place.

in my place of work, like others, gender wouldn’t be relevant.

we have all worked with the ops type. Man or woman. The one who comes into the office and does a days worth of calls loudly. Trying to show how important they are, it’s why she tells us what she was discussing when it’s irrelevant and why she thinks she’s in a position to give feedback to a senior manager.

the thing is no one is impressed. It’s the opposite, everyone hates it and feels disdain for the person performance working.

so the manager did right in pulling her aside and asking her to take calls in a pod to e sure she didn’t disrupt everyone else. So unless some back story here if a man was being just as much of a twat then he’d also get told.

But the two can't be compared. One was a noisy, busy office with nowhere else to go and one is an open plan hub with designated areas to conduct meetings.

I didn't say she wasn't being unreasonable. I said theres no way he would have publicly pulled her into a room and given her a dressing down about it if she'd been a male. This is emphatically true, at least where I work (a wework type office). At most, another manager from an aligned/related team would maybe have said, in passing, to a young junior male, 'can you keep it down a bit mate' or something similar. Absolutely no way would he have pulled him into a room. If it was a manager from a completely separate business they would say nothing directly. They would complain to the workspace management team who would have then put signs up, if they agreed, about which were designated quiet areas etc. They might also have sent an email to everyone saying please use a pod in such and such shared workspace area if you need a meeting space.

And how do I think he should have handled the fact that memeners of his team were (allegedly) complaining about teb noicse she was making on calls? Exactly as above. He should have raised it with the shared work space management, in private, or, at a push, with her manager, again in private. He has no jurisdiction over her and it is absolutely not acceptable to pull her up in public to humiliate and embarass her, which was absolutely a deliberate power move because HE was annoyed by her behaviour.

He’s right. Suck it up.

This is why home working is the future. Don’t have listen to other people’s gobs all day.

Yes, but your first two lines are the key point. Most workers in your environment spent a high proportion of their day on the phone. So being surrounded by people doing the same didn't bother you. But in OPs case, everyone else's job has vanishingly little phone time and work away quietly. So OP is the only one, in a quiet office who spends most of the day on the phone. The odd phone call is part and parcel of shared office space, but not 6-7 hours of constant calls.

He did the right thing, let you get on with your day and then politely explained to you directly and discretely. Your anger comes from embarrasment.

I work in an office like this. Pods are for calls, or stay home. Open plan spaces are for quiet, individual work.

When everyone is doing it - that's the office culture. Where only one does it - and it disturbs the majority? Then, as OP acknowledged, it's not that office culture and has to stop