[HN Gopher] Capturing the Disappearing Sounds of the Workplace
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Capturing the Disappearing Sounds of the Workplace
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-08-07 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| hereforphone wrote:
| Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment.
| whatshisface wrote:
| _Loud chewing._
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| but why?
|
| seriously, all I want is to _forget_ that kind of sound.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I'd like to have a comparison of workspace ambience as decades
| flow by. The difference between 1970s office and 1990s and now.
| That kind of thing. Would make a nice movie.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My current workplace is so quiet. Even when they went to an
| open layout. Sometimes you hear keyboards, or quiet
| conversations. Not too intrusive, when I need to really get
| in the zone I throw on headphones with music anyway, just
| like I do at home.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The MRI had me smiling - patients get earplugs and earmuffs and
| the rooms are heavily sound insulated. No one ever wanted that
| noise.
| walshemj wrote:
| Having been though a few MRI scanners I agree.
|
| For those that haven't had an MRI it a very loud grinding
| sound and quite claustrophobic.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| It will be gone before you realize we should have preserved it.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| I once worked in an open office where testing and editing
| ringtones was the business. No sound studios, no headphones
| even!
|
| The straw that broke the camels back, for me, was Gilbert
| Gottfried's ringtones. All day long for what seemed like
| eternity, but was only _weeks_.
|
| Perhaps some common office sounds should be recorded for
| perpetuity; many, if not most, should be nuked from orbit.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I'm not really going to miss it at all, but preservation is
| preservation.
| anthropodie wrote:
| Why are we romanticizing work at office?
|
| Work from home works. It works far effectively than many people
| would like to admit. I think people who love work from office are
| also the ones who were in favor of open office plans. When open
| offices happened, we the ones who did not like open offices
| adapted as per your requirements. I guess now it's your turn to
| adapt?
|
| I want to know what decides which side you are on perhaps
| introversion and extroversion traits? I am Introvert. Thoughts?
| auxym wrote:
| My child's daycare is right by my workplace. Working from home
| would mean a double commute, not interested.
|
| Finding a new daycare where I live would be very difficult, as
| there is a severe shortage of daycare spots here, with several
| years long waitlists.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Fine, then _you_ can work in the office, why does it mean
| everyone else has to, too?
|
| People who want to work remotely aren't interested in forcing
| others to do so.
| ghaff wrote:
| In general that's true. Although remote people in groups
| that generally didn't have people who were routinely remote
| pre-pandemic will expect those groups to accommodate them
| going forward. For example, by having people in meetings
| calling in from their desks.
| auxym wrote:
| Of course not. Just stating another valid reason why people
| would want to work in the office.
| closeparen wrote:
| Yes, you absolutely are, every third comment on a remote
| work thread is about how people in an office can't be
| allowed to just talk to each other, but must always go
| through videoconferencing software to include the remote
| workers. At that point you're still working remotely,
| you're just doing it in close proximity.
| HomeDeLaPot wrote:
| I'm an introvert, and I'm not a fan of open office plans, and I
| don't have kids, but even so I prefer working in the office.
|
| I would otherwise be spending nearly 100% of my time in my
| apartment, not getting even the smallest amount of exercise,
| fresh air, or social interaction, and dealing with noise and
| interruptions from my wife and dog. Also, I live a 5-minute
| drive or a 25-minute walk (!) away from work. It gives me a
| reason to get up in the morning, shower, put on something other
| than sweat pants, and go outside. My workplace is somewhat more
| quiet and comfortable, it provides drinks and sometimes food,
| and I find meetings a bit more engaging in person.
|
| It ultimately comes down to individual situations and
| preferences.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've been more remote than not (with a lot of travel
| normally) for 15+ years. But if I could easily walk to the
| office, rather than drive for 30 minutes, I'd probably go in
| a lot more just to break up the routine even if I didn't
| _need_ to.
|
| 30 minutes by car isn't a _bad_ commute. But it 's enough
| that I don't see a reason to do it if there's no real
| benefit. (Most of the people I work with are in different
| offices or remote.)
| darrylb42 wrote:
| People in favor of returning to the office either have private
| offices at work, or small apartments with no AC. Ironically the
| person who favors in office the most does so much travel they
| are never really in the office anyway.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have a 3000sf house with one 150sf room dedicated to
| working from home, air conditioning, and a solid Internet
| connection. My desk at work is a 6 foot surface in a wide
| open room with 20 other people. I can see the upside of going
| back into the office. It will be especially appealing once my
| kids are back to in-person school and my wife starts going to
| her office. The only thing that actually _isn 't_ appealing
| is the 14 mile drive to get there.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > People in favor of returning to the office either have
| private offices at work, or small apartments with no AC.
|
| Children. Consistently I have noted that people who like
| going to the office, and work in general for that matter,
| almost always have children.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > Why are we romanticizing work at office?
|
| For many months news outlets have been pushing work-from-office
| narratives. The PR companies that want people to go to another
| location to work (the ones that represent office building
| companies, starbucks, etc) create stores, images, quotes etc,
| all ready to publish, allowing a news site to slap a byline on,
| and they get their narrative out - "Churnalism"
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I hate open office plans. I dislike being crowded in an office.
| I do prefer being alone in an office space though, or in a
| coworking space that has an office with a door.
|
| I just work better if I go to "work place" work and then come
| home. Yes, I could get a new living place with an extra room
| for an office, but at that point I'm subsidizing my employer
| quite a lot.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Isn't this article about the sound of non-office work places
| like medical facilities and manufacturing sites? Seems a bit
| off topic to turn this in to yet another discussion about
| remote work. Or at least if we're going to talk about remote
| work can we talk about it in the context of the kind of work
| that's hard to do remote?
| guilhas wrote:
| People that don't want to spend 24h a day at home, especially
| small homes, without AC, which is most of them
|
| The office is one of the last socializing places for adults
|
| But if you like to be alone and at home, that is great
| [deleted]
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I heard a lot of people say the remote work lifestyle would
| become a lot more sociable once the lockdowns were over. At
| least in CA the lockdowns have been over for 6 weeks now. I
| still feel isolated at home.
| nathanlied wrote:
| I don't want to sound accusatory with this at all, so I
| apologize in advance if that's what it sounds like. I'm
| merely speaking from experience.
|
| "Remote work lifestyle" is what you make of it. During
| lockdown, many of us were forced into -a- lifestyle. People
| adapted how they could to the new circumstances, some
| developed healthy habits, others less so. Now circumstances
| changed again, but it does not constitute a break, like
| lockdown did. Point being, you need to look at what you're
| allowed to do (and okay with doing!) in the current
| context, and incorporate that in your life.
|
| If you work with other people, there will likely be others
| that enjoy physically socializing. Try pushing for a
| slack/discord/whatever platform you use channel for people
| to schedule out-of-work meetings. Sell it (if you have to)
| as teambuilding. This kind of thing has existed in many
| workplaces I've had knowledge of with (and even without!)
| remote workers.
|
| As an example, a friend's team had a couple of people who
| lived alone in town craving social contact; so they started
| scheduling Friday night dinners/late night talks at each of
| their houses in turn. The other members of the team have
| patios, so they can just sit outside, drink some beers, and
| do the socializing there. Sometimes they go out to
| restaurants, other times they order in some pizza. It
| works, and it created a much more positive team environment
| between everyone.
|
| Now, that might not necessarily be you - and it may
| actually be that you're one of those people that fully
| remote work doesn't work for - in which case not a ton can
| be done, and I'm sure there will be workplaces that will
| accommodate you. I'd even daresay those will be the
| majority. But you can give it a try, if you see any
| benefits at all from remote work.
| AirborneUnicorn wrote:
| The lockdowns have little bearing on severity of the
| ongoing pandemic. The lockdowns ended, but did you change
| your lifestyle? I don't think it's fair to say we're in a
| 'sociable' era once more unless you (or we) decide to
| engage in that level of risk (in my opinion, of course).
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Is the article romanticizing work at an office? It seems like
| they just want a historical sound registery of different work
| environments. Cataloging something in a history book doesn't
| mean we're romanticizing it, and neither does a registry of
| sounds.
| analog31 wrote:
| In my view, the mainstream mass-office environment is the
| result of something like an evolutionary process -- a series of
| gradual adaptations to changing conditions. And management
| habits subsequently adapted themselves to that environment.
|
| Some of those conditions no longer exist, but like Chesterton's
| fence, we're hesitant to get rid of the physical and cultural
| manifestations of the mass-office if we can't figure out why it
| existed in the first place.
|
| One seemingly obvious reason was that people needed access to
| the tools and materials of their work. (Before ca. 1990,
| information was a "material"). And there was really only one
| practical means for workers to interact and share information
| in groups.
|
| The rest is history. ;-)
|
| Some people adapted their work and life to the mass-office,
| others didn't. The person whose day care is across the street
| from the office has made such an adaptation. For others, the
| mass-office was a hell that they tolerated because they needed
| the money, e.g., with continual distraction and hours of
| commuting per week as a form of unpaid labor.
|
| Then the pandemic threw everything into disarray and pressed a
| giant Reset button.
|
| Today, I think it's fair to say that we don't know what works.
| The mass-office worked for some but not others. I have little
| doubt that working from home will work for some but not for
| others. None of us know what new adaptations will emerge, or
| how management will adapt.
|
| So far management wants to hang onto the habits that they were
| familiar with, so they want us back in the office, but they
| can't articulate why. The "collaboration" argument was used to
| herd us into open plan offices, with a possible negative effect
| on collaboration, so that card has been played.
|
| We don't know what management techniques will work in the new
| environment. The factory style "line foreman" was an easy role
| to fill with a large cadre of minimally educated workers. At my
| own workplace, the teams that transitioned the most
| successfully to remote work were the ones where people were
| largely self directed in the first place.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Maybe it'll make for good television in 10 years?
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