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#Post#: 13424--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: bopper Date: September 10, 2018, 1:51 pm
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There was the guy who would talk to himself...sort of give a
running commentary on what he was doing.
or say something like "Oh Cool!" so you kind of (at first) felt
obligated to ask what was cool...
#Post#: 13455--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: Gladly Date: September 11, 2018, 6:07 am
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Fish Curry lunch. We could still smell it a week afterwards!
#Post#: 13461--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: hjaye Date: September 11, 2018, 7:11 am
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These stories reminded me of an office mate I had. It was a
small office broken up into three cubes. The acoustics in the
building were terrible, you could hear everything and everyone.
From the rooms next to us, to people walking down the halls.
He had a habit of making a lot of personal phone calls, and a
lot of times I would be on a conference call when he made them
(I did not use the speaker on my phone). As I said, the
acoustics were bad, and to top it off, he was an extremely loud
talker. I had to constantly ask him to take it outside, or hang
up and make the call after I was finished.
He was pretty clueless. There was one time he was on the phone
with his wife (who he openly stated he did not like) and he got
mad at her. He screamed into the phone yelling at her and
cussing up a storm. When he got off the phone I told him if he
was going to make a personal phone call where he felt he might
lose his temper, he would be better off going out to his car in
the parking garage and talking there so he would not be
overheard. I told him if a manager had been walking down the
hall when he was on the phone he would probably get in a lot of
trouble for the language he was using. He looked at me and said
“So you think other people could hear me?”
#Post#: 13471--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: gramma dishes Date: September 11, 2018, 9:49 am
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[quote author=bopper link=topic=656.msg13424#msg13424
date=1536605462]
There was the guy who would talk to himself...sort of give a
running commentary on what he was doing.
or say something like "Oh Cool!" so you kind of (at first) felt
obligated to ask what was cool...
[/quote]
Years ago when I was teaching, the teacher across the hall (who
was a wonderful person and a terrific and much loved teacher)
would do that. She'd come in in the morning and while walking
down the hall or taking off her coat would say something like
"Wasn't that beautiful?" with absolutely no context or reference
to anything. We had no idea what she was talking about! It
happened often. :-\
#Post#: 13479--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: Girlie Date: September 11, 2018, 11:18 am
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Not so much an open office concept as a "shared desk" concept -
where movement between locations meant you sometimes (read: very
often) would end up working in someone's else's desk. Desks were
considered "home base," but the understanding in the beginning
was that they belonged to the employer, not the employee, and
needed to be utilized to best assist our customers.
It didn't stop people from complaining about PETTY stuff, though
- chairs being left at slightly different heights, pens being
moved to a different side of the desk drawer, a mousepad being
moved ever so slightly to the left, someone taking the
initiative to properly clean and sanitize an area that had
previously had leftover FOOD in it... All of the complaints
weren't about the same employees (a total of sic employees,
three of whom moved desks more often than the others), but it
got so bad that I finally started taking "before" pictures of
any desk I was working at for more than a single day so that I
could make sure EVERYTHING - crumbs and all - would still be in
their appropriate places when the other occupant returned.
Honestly, I DID have one person complain about me several times
to our manager about how I kept rearranging her desk and moving
stuff around (I was, at the time, in "her" desk three out of six
workdays of the week). The manager finally had me come to the
desk first thing in the morning so that my coworker could tell
me everything that she was finding fault with. When confronted
about what I was doing, specifically, she couldn't name a single
thing. The manager then told her that we all had to share desks,
and as long as no one was disrespecting her or taking her
personal items, she'd have to deal with it. That coworker did
stop complaining.
#Post#: 13597--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: Anastasia Beaverhausen Date: September 12, 2018, 3:52 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Gladly link=topic=656.msg13455#msg13455
date=1536664035]
Fish Curry lunch. We could still smell it a week afterwards!
[/quote]
Oh holy hell. :-X
#Post#: 13759--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: Rose Red Date: September 14, 2018, 1:31 pm
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People who eat a full meal (not a snack) at their desk but not
doing actual work at the same time, and then sign out for their
hour lunch.
#Post#: 13813--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: Aleko Date: September 15, 2018, 4:45 am
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[quote]People who eat a full meal (not a snack) at their desk
but not doing actual work at the same time, and then sign out
for their hour lunc[/quote]h.
Well, at least in an open-plan layout they can't conceal their
transgressions! These are certainly people who would be idling
just as much, and probably more so, if they had offices where
they weren't in view of others.
#Post#: 13942--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: DCGirl Date: September 17, 2018, 8:19 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I was laid off from a job in February and started a new one at
the beginning of May. Both places have open office
configurations (although at New Job, as a manager, I have an
office). Old Job went full open office in December. The
differences between how each place chose to implement open
offices are striking.
Old Job had exposed duct work (meaning, no acoustical ceiling
tiles), polished concrete floors, and open coffee bars. Cube
walls, such as they were, had no carpet or padding to deaden
sound. The noise was deafening at times. The receptionist at
my dentist's office told me to call back when I was off the
train one day. I told her I was sitting at my desk. New Job
has carpet, padded cube walls, ceiling tiles, and the kitchens
and coffee areas are behind doors (most of them are in areas
that you pass through going from one section of the building to
another, so they're not totally isolated, but there is clearly
an effort to address noise and smells). Old Job had exactly two
"telephone rooms" per floor where you go could to make a phone
call. These were invariably camped in all day by people from
other offices who didn't want to hog one of the in-demand
conference rooms. New Job has at least 10 "privacy rooms" on
each floor where people can make phone calls, work privately, or
pray, plus oodles of formal conference space as well as informal
spaces to gather (these are spots at the ends of the halls, away
from offices and cubes). We just don't have the issue of people
talking loudly on personal calls; they take them elsewhere.
New Job has a rule that you are not allowed to eat at your desk
-- you must get up and go to the lunchroom. It was explained to
me that this was because of food aromas -- we have a very
international workforce and what smells delicious in one culture
(fish curry, for example) doesn't in another. I was so used to
eating at my desk that I balked at that rule a little bit, but
now I find that getting up and going somewhere else for half an
hour is a good thing in so many ways, and not just the aromas.
I've chatted with people in the lunchroom I might not have met
otherwise because our jobs don't intersect.
New Job is very flexible about work hours and working from home.
Old Job was utterly rigid about hours and, after the move to
the open concept in December, clamped down on working from home
arrangements because so many people starting working from home
the shiny new office was like a ghost town some days.
So, for me, a lot of what makes an open office work is the
thought that the company puts into making it work.
As for breaches of etiquette, at Old Job there was the guy who
worked out in the gym at lunch and hung his wet towel and sweaty
workout clothes over his cube wall to dry.
#Post#: 13996--------------------------------------------------
Re: Cubes Open Office land - what breaches of etiquette have you
seen?
By: AnnaT Date: September 17, 2018, 7:14 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=DCGirl link=topic=656.msg13942#msg13942
date=1537190379]
As for breaches of etiquette, at Old Job there was the guy who
worked out in the gym at lunch and hung his wet towel and sweaty
workout clothes over his cube wall to dry.
[/quote]
We need a vomit emoticon...
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