RWHN's Burning Issue of the Minute

[leln]

Where I work, company policy states that headphones of any sort must be kept low enough to hear fire alarms, general conversation etc. I tend to use this as an excuse to eavesdrop whenever my earbuds are in. My supervisor is talking to someone from another department? Pause mp3 player and listen while making convincing typing noises or staring intently at a spreadsheet. After all, this info may be useful later on.

hah I did  that all the time

Hey, it helps me keep details straight if my supervisor forgets who said what or when they need the statistics by. I'm sure they know that I hear more than I let on, but as long as I'm using the information to increase departmental efficiency no one will call me on it. The fact that every now and the I get a useful tidbit of workplace gossip is entirely coincidental, I promise.

Nigel: I totally agree about interrupted workflow. I can't count the number of times a 5-10 minute task has blossomed into 2+ hours of effort because people keep asking me how to use the fucking postage machine, which I think is older than I am. There's a happy medium of personal productivity and humoring coworkers, and if anyone finds it please ask them to explain it to me.

[Jenne]

This reminds me why I still choose to work from home.  Sure, it's a bit lonely, but damn, I just have WAY less that gets me down about my job without politics to get in my way. 

Though it's terribly isolating on those 8-hour shifts.

[AFK]

I don't know anything about RWHN's work environment, I'm just putting some thoughts out there. I've worked in offices where being interrupted was a serious problem, and it was incredibly annoying. And, in one place I couldn't turn my ringer off, and the dumb chick in the cube next to mine, who was also constantly interrupting my work to tell me things that weren't urgent or often even relevant to my job, would tell me my phone was ringing when I was sitting right there, and was letting it go to voicemail on purpose because I was in the middle of something important and time-sensitive that I needed to finish, and I knew the call wasn't something I needed to pick up. It was nerve-wracking. That's the crappiest part about working in a cube environment; not being able to defend your workflow boundaries against well-meaning officemates who think they're helping you do your job better, but are actually hindering you getting it done at all.

I work in a tiny office.  There are only 6 program people in the office.  That is, of the 10 staff, 6 of us actually work on our health promotion topic areas.  The other 4 are support staff.  We are pretty much a team.  While we all have our separate work plans, we're all pretty much working on the same goal of improving health in our county.  So, this means we are fairly regularly getting calls from the public with questions regarding our topic areas.  It is pretty important that when our phones ring, we answer them.  If you miss too many calls from the public, that can impact reputation amongst the public.  It's not so much that people are using earbuds, but it's the fact that the way they are being used seems to be distracting and keeping them from being as responsive to the public and co-workers as they should.  And we don;'t bother each other willy nilly.  If someone walks into your office with a question, it is usually a very important, and timely, question.