Open Floor Plan with co-workers every sound = annoying!

[hellokitty]

Ugh, we have the same problem and worse yet, no cubicles. It's more the noise from phone conversations that bug me more than anything. I do work with my team on some projects and we usually try to go to reserve a room, but sometimes they're all taken. We're also not allowed to have headphones on... Which I don't think is fair. When it's loud in the office, I often feel I would've been better off working at home that day.

[cagey]

My office designs open office spaces for our agency (sorry!) and they def take getting use to.

I'd recommend 2 things--use coworkers snacktime to stretch your legs or go to the printer, etc. secondly, request from your boss, property manager, office engineering dept, etc additional white noise installed, either locally at your desk or for the room. Or see if they could enforce some "no snacking or chatting at desks" rules and pull those activities to a collaborative space that's off to th side. It sounds like it wasn't laid out well. I've worked on (and in!) open office spaces with +300 people on boomerang desks and after an adjustment period, find that I am much more productive (as long as I have my collaborative spaces to break!!)

[rin]

My office has an open floor plan (no cubicles, just desks in pods), and I absolutely hear you on the sounds! One of my (otherwise lovely) coworkers is amazingly loud while drinking coffee/eating lunch, and it's super distracting.

We've actually recently had a whole-office discussion about ways to allow people to focus/work without disturbances, and have recently agreed that if someone is wearing headphones it means they're not to be disturbed (barring an emergency) by directly going over to their desk, and that the first approach should be pinging them on our internal IM system. I think it's perfectly reasonable for your direct report to message you rather than popping his head up to ask you a question whenever he feels like it; would noise-cancelling headphones be an option for you?