Noise at work, How do you cope?

I have a 65db server in my office that they refuse to pack into it's own section, so I'm stuck with the fans (which are constantly on) allllllllllllllll day every day of work - 9 to 5 monday to friday. It's like torture as its basically white noise!
The only alternative I have been offered when I complained was to be moved out of my own office into the main sales office downstairs, and whilst it wont be a constant drone, there is a REALLY loud person who works down there who near enough shouts to talk and laughs like a fog horn and then there is the noise of two fax machines and two printers, the rest of the workers in there and all their telephones and then the factory is only next door and everytime that door opens you hear the machines! I honestly do sympathise with you sir because I know how you feel. We just have to get on with it

I work in a big control room (20+ ppl) with phones, faxes and such constantly going. Plus trains rumbling past directly outside (you don't hear them so much as feel them) and servers on every wall where there isn't a window humming away. Oh, and the air conditioning grinds as the vanes adjust themselves.

It's maddening, I think I'm being stressed by it, especially as a lot of the folks here expect you to overhear them discussing problems and get ****y if you come up and ask about something you were expected to have overheard.

What's worse is in the break area, managers use it for business calls/laptops and rowdy pway guys come in to shout and laugh at each other so there really is no peace.

Oh, and the manager guy (who nobody likes) has taken to coming out of his office and setting his laptop up on the desk directly behind me, claiming he's trying to 'gel with the team' by being out here with us. Although he insist all phones be on silent and no calls be taken, HE of course is allowed to have his phone buzzing every ten seconds (really) or to use it constantly.

So yeah, you've got my sympathy.

[tigersaw]

What? pardon? Hello?
try working in the middle of an airport

[Viney]

Originally Posted by timwilky

Noise at work, How do you cope?

Turn the radio up

[Bri w]

Don't go to work

Headphones + Spotify = 1 happy programmer

[timwilky]

Well, my boss has told me to maintain a diary of when the noise occurs. One of my colleagues has also had a little moan about the background noise. Useful my boss also suggests I complete a new DSE assessment as I have changed locations. There is a noise category within that. Ideally it then gets record within a system the EHS people have to resolve.

[Luckypants]

Tim I sympathise. Even working at home on my own, if there is a knotty code problem I'm trying to follow or debugging a dump I find I need complete quiet. My music gets turned off when working of the hard stuff

[dizzyblonde]

Originally Posted by reeder

I have a 65db server in my office that they refuse to pack into it's own section, so I'm stuck with the fans (which are constantly on) allllllllllllllll day every day of work - 9 to 5 monday to friday. It's like torture as its basically white noise!

Oh the luxury!!!

Try eight of these babies, each the size of ooo I dunno, the height of your living room? and as wide as the length of an SV?....each!



attached to other machinery, that clatters, bangs and wallops, ten million miles of conveyor belts, 2500 tins an hour clattering on one end empty, and coming out of another machine, that clatters, bangs and wallops, that spits out 2500 tins an hour full of sweets, flying down more conveyors into three automated taping machines....along with any other line of machinery that someone else is running at the time. Oh yeah, then up some more conveyors. The only time its quiet is if theres no sweets(rare) or something breaks(almost as rare) or if the conveyors above to take them all down to be stacked, get errrrr blocked, and all the tins get jammed, creating back up down said conveyor....oh and falling off at the bottom, or above, clattering and banging....not so rare