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A comment on The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. Parent comment

Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by tombert on Thursday July 12, 2018 @09:28AM (#17514239)
I agree. When I suggested putting on a low-budget 50's monster movie on as background noise (e.g. Gamera, Godzilla, The Giant Claw, something that's amusing to look at for thirty seconds, laugh a bit, but not overly distracting), people act almost offended that I would waste company time like that. But if the TV has some form of ball on it, drop everything.
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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by thx11389793 on Thursday July 12, 2018 @02:06PM (#17517119)
I worked in a highrise office that had TVs ringing the floor that you could remote into to display dashboards and whatnot. One day I decided to play, on mute, endless episodes of How It's Made.

For reference, I work in a hardware engineering group. Some mesmerizing process would show up on screen, one person would stop and stare, and 5 minutes later we have a half dozen engineers who've stopped what they were doing to watch How It's Made.

Eventually we settled on Bob Ross as a happy medium in terms of "Pleasant Ambiance" and "Not Too Distracting."

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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by beaconstudios on Thursday July 12, 2018 @12:04PM (#17515906)
the important people in the office both get to dictate what's allowed, and are in my experience more likely to be extroverted/sports-watchy types. Thus they exploit their position to watch sports with the other important people and who cares what the nerds think/want.
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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by smelendez on Thursday July 12, 2018 @12:59PM (#17516492)
I think people are generally more tolerant of live events. I've been in offices where everyone's watching a political inauguration, or dramatic rescue, etc.
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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by Symbiote on Thursday July 12, 2018 @05:56PM (#17518953)
Last time (perhaps the previous football World Cup?) my manager simply said I could go home once the game started, as no-one else was going to do any work so that was fair.
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