anyone here had officemates who are loud, but effectively at random? :/ this might be question-worthy but it's infrequent enough I suspect the answer is "meh, just deal with it, not worth bringing up"

We have a bunch of construction going on right now @EmC, and it seems pretty random when they'll decide to start cutting through (what sounds like) support beams with power tools for 15 minutes. Idk if you'd call them "officemates" though :p

But more seriously, I do have some guys who sit 20ft from me who will take meetings at their desks randomly and end up talking pretty loudly to (what looks like) no one.

@scohe001 haha, funny you mention, apparently that happened today on the other side of the building

Oof. Yea construction is the worst

what happened was that my officemate (who only shows up like, half time at most) was in today, read some news, and exclaimed "HOLY SHIT!!" and then clapped really loud

which idk about anyone else but in a small room that was like.. major adrenaline spike and I kinda froze up

Oh so not even work related at all. Like there's no necessity for that and it's super abrupt

Does that happen often?

@EmC I used to. Then my department moved, and now I'm at the corner of a major thoroughfare :(

@scohe001 yeah, exactly. it's not often, but it's happened a few times before. this was the most jarring one though

@Upper_Case that's no fun either :(

I think it's a valid question then

Especially since there's a chance something like it will happen again if you don't do anything

There are several questions on Workplace.SE about it, but those really are all "suck it up, and maybe buy some headphones" type answers

@Upper_Case that's what I was afraid of :/

(I need better-fitting headphones.. mine are too big and my ears hurt now)

@EmC Mine too :( They're fine, just not meant for 6+ hours of continuous use, five days each week

I think that you could get some good IPS angles on the issue with a question on IPS, though

maybe I will write something up :)

next question.. does hardware recommendations cover headphones? :P

huh, they do have a couple

Bose QC would be my go to. Although my SO says they're extremely uncomfortable with her glasses. They're fine for me with mine so YMMV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lol well now I don't know what to think

I dislike over-ear headphones when I have glasses on, but prefer them otherwise

But I've yet to find a good option for blocking conversation noise. Noise-cancelling headphones, in my experience, work poorly for voices and tend to make them seem more prominent by removing background noises

yeah, that's tough to block out.. I usually just turn my music up, but even music can be distracting sometimes.

@JAD wow that was quite far. had to use Load to my last message

interpersonal.stackexchange.com/posts/22967/revisions <- simply click here, Tinkeringbell