Headphones in office

[eternallybaffled]

Are you allowed to use headphones in your office? I got told today I couldn't because of 'health and safety'. Aside from someone having headphones up so loud to not hear a fire alarm/phone/someone trying to get their attention I can't imagine how it has any health/safety issues???

Yes, we’ve never been told not to. The music is hardly blaring as to disturb anyone.
It’s the only thing that keeps me awake some afternoons

Never been told that. I'm really not sure of what health and safety risk there is..!

We got desk so our 'landline' phone numbers are actually on Skype. So we have to have headphones to be able to have calls.

For transcription I wear them, and I know others also put them on with ‘concentration music’ to shut out the noise of conversations when they’re having to number crunch.

We’re allowed, as long as you don’t wear them for long enough that you’re seen as being antisocial, and as long as someone can get your attention if they want to.

(Although I’m now self employed so I can wear what I like )

Similar to @Ronia in my office - they got rid of all our landline phones a couple of years ago so most people use headphones for conference calls as well as webcasts / online training etc. Of course, you can never tell if someone is on a call but on mute and not really contributing or if they're just listening to music which isn't overly helpful.

I don't think anyone would notice - they'd just think I was on a conference call, unless they got close enough to hear Absolute 80s buzzing away from the region of my ears.

Fire hazard - Even if I somehow managed to drown out the extremely loud fire alarm, it would be fairly obvious that everyone around me was getting up all of a sudden and leaving the office, so I don't see a risk.

In our company headphone use varies from dept to dept, and mainly depends on the manager.
Admin office consider headphones to be an absolute no and you would be disciplined for wearing them. This is the serious office with minimal talk, no background music etc.
Sales office is shared with a couple of directors when they turn up, they don’t like distractions, but it can also be noisy with phone calls etc so individuals pop in headphones to concentrate, at first they were discouraged but then it was allowed.
Our office is a hybrid team of creatives and admin set up by the creative director, we have background music and can wear headphones if we want as long as we can hear the landline. No problem on health and safety grounds as the fire alarm is so loud it would wake the dead, and as an open plan office if something did happen we would hardly leave ‘Tim’ in the corner as we evacuated just because he had his headphones in!
I wear mine about 25% of the time currently as I am working on the initial stages of a project with a new team so need to be hands on, when we get deep into the project it will increase as we each concentrate on delivering our areas.

We can; it’s the only way I can concentrate some days

This is what I thought! I really struggle some days with the background noise, never mind the days when the ones beside me are having loud convos and roaring with laughter- I'm totally not a buzz kill but I just reckon my wearing headphones will save someone dying by holepunch to the head one day. I can still hear everything I need to with them in and can concentrate a hell of a lot better than I do without