In contrast, most people are totally happy to blather about mindlessly, without any thought or care at all about who they are bothering with their chatter.
1) This isn't only at work, it's everywhere. Just yesterday I was wondering: When / how did walking around talking out loud to yourself (i.e., your phone) become normalized. How / why does having an unseen device in your hand or pocket make rude acceptable?
2) I also wonder how cultural this is? That is, is it only a USA thing? Are there cultures where this is less common? Where open plans might be doable, or at least less offensive?
Perhaps too often I'm on the wrong place at the wrong time but I hear plenty of half conversations in public (e.g., on the train) that would not happen if both parties were in the same row.
Too much volume. Questionable subject matter. Far from urgent. The rest of us don't need to hear that. Do they?
I'm trapped in a dystopian open-office nightmare as well. When somebody comes up and starts talking to the guy who sits next to me, right in my ear, it's distracting as hell. So when I'm considering talking to somebody else in the office, I take into account the fact that I'm going to be distracting all of the people within earshot of this conversation that they almost definitely don't care about. As a matter of politeness, I try to use chat tools so that I don't disrupt any more people than I need to. Of course, cubicle walls solves that problem and permits face-to-face conversation, but that's not worth a few extra bucks apparently.