Crowded workplaces can create irritations
There is a monster in the next cubicle.
It coughs and honks. It shouts on the telephone and blasts out music. It whistles and hums. It reeks of body odor and offensive perfume. It burps and snorts. It chews gum and eats malodorous food. It chomps and belches. It spits – and does worse.
The odd thing is that it never has any trouble finding or holding jobs. Every office built on the popular open plan employs at least one. Miss Manners knows this because she gets reports on the monster’s activities from the cubicle neighbors.
They write in a state of desperation. They can’t concentrate on their work. Even if there happens to be a peaceful moment, they are waiting in dread for the next offense. They are pleading for a solution before going next door and throttling the monster.
No such luck. We will have to find nonviolent and even nonrude ways to deal with the problem.
You would think that those who invented the modern open office might have realized that these daily irritants were bound to occur.
But no. Overstimulated by the realization of how cheap a way this would be to pack workers in, they babbled of the productivity and camaraderie that would result. All thrown in together, office workers would surely fall under the spell of one another’s charms – but, of course, in a way that would foster creative team spirit rather than sexual harassment.
It does not seem to have occurred to management that people have various habits and quirks that become annoying to those who spend significant time in their vicinity. If this is true of those who love each other and have chosen to live together, it should have been obvious how much more it would affect those thrown together by the accident of employment.
So there is no system in place for dealing with the inevitable clashes. Management neither sets rules about petty forms of behavior, nor arbitrates disputes. Its attitude is that all those people it has crowded together should find a way to get along.
The result is that some seethe and do nothing, while others go on the attack, which inspires counterattacks. This does not make for a pleasant work force.
Like it or not, management has to be the promulgator of rules that it culls from the workers themselves. Such matters as noise levels, restrictions on gum chewing or eating and the degrees of minor illnesses tolerated at work should be reasonably regulated. They will be ridiculed, of course, but that will provide the much-touted camaraderie.
They will also be disobeyed, and management has the responsibility to deal with violators. It is easier for a supervisor to say regretfully that “that there have been complaints,” without naming names, than for individuals of similar rank to deal directly with one another.
If management doesn’t want to undertake this, it has another option. It can put up real walls.