For Most People, Noise And Privacy Top The List Of Office Irritants
By Paul Kurtz
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - What bugs you about your office? A new study from the University of Sydney finds that it's all about the noise.
The researchers listed more than a dozen sources of irritation in the office, from workplace cleanliness to comfort of furnishings and colors and textures.
But those were all minor issues compared to sound and privacy, which were the number one irritants for 60-percent of cubicle workers and half of those who have partitions. Those numbers dovetail with the handful of people we singled out.
"I can hear people's conversations when they're on their phone, and I'm trying to concentrate working, so that kind of bothers me," one woman said.
"Even the other day I said, 'Oh, I was going to take off the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,' and I just mentioned it to my boss, and somebody in the next cubicle said, 'You can't do that, we have a lot of filings to do.' It was like, you have to be here next week. And I'm like, 'This is a private conversation.'"
That reminds me of our newsroom, when someone's trying to do a phone interview and a colleague breaks out his collection of greatest hits headlines.
