The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea

Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by telchar on Thursday July 12, 2018 @12:49PM (#17516408)

You could go the opposite route: good earplugs with good noise canceling over-ear headphones. The advantage of this over the other setup is that the minimum effective volume from music is lower, protecting against tinnitus. I had the same issues and found this setup works well for me.

As an added bonus the obvious rigamarole I have to go through when a coworker taps me on the shoulder makes them more likely to send an email next time.

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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by kingbirdy on Thursday July 12, 2018 @01:43PM (#17516915)

What's the difference you notice in the "earbuds + noise cancelling headphones" setup vs using the noise cancelling headphones to also play music?

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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by telchar on Thursday July 12, 2018 @05:01PM (#17518578)

I prefer the music to come from the headphones because my in-ear phones can be overly loud, even on the lowest volume setting on my phone. Having music coming from them hours every day had me feeling like I was damaging my hearing.

With earplugs inside noise-canceling phones I still get two layers of sound isolation but have a layer of sound isolation between me and the phones, providing finer volume control so I can add just enough music to finish the job of drowning out loud people around me without hearing damage.

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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by thfuran on Thursday July 12, 2018 @02:14PM (#17517176)

earplugs + noise canceling headphones is better noise suppression than earplugs or noise-canceling headphones alone.

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Re:The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, ve... by loco5niner on Thursday July 12, 2018 @03:26PM (#17517800)

Thanks, I've tried this and it works slightly better. Can still hear noisy co-workers though.

It seems the best solution is to not have loud people around.

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