Anyone else hate open plan offices?

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I really dislike high pitched sounds, especially when they are sudden and random. That's why crowded shopping centres are not my favourite, as someone is sure to have at least one screaming kid.

People clicking things also give me the irrits.

I HATE my open-plan office!

There is aways someone talking right near to me, either to someone else or on the phone. And the sound of typing drives me nuts too - our keyboards are very loud! Click click click all the time.

I have just filled in a questionnaire about how I am finding it - "What works? Nothing!" but I don't suppose it will make any difference.

So I can't do much work. I am trying not to feel guilty about this becuase it isn't my fault, but I do anyway.

Open plan offices are for employers who don't trust their staff to work unsupervised.

No one except management ever likes the open plan.

OP offices suck. I'm a software engineer and I work mainly on safety-critical systems. If I get it wrong, I can kill people ... so I need to be able to concentrate. After a day doing that in an OP set-up I'm just exhausted. The last big project I worked on was Air Traffic Control and by the time my contract came to an end I was so stressed out that I went into major depression ... That has persisted for over a year ...

OP is a health-and-safety issue in itself for aspies.

Yes.

I can't imagine why anyone would think an open floor plan is a good idea.

Sure, you can cram more employees in a room that way and watch what they're all doing at once...

But, your customers hear tons of noise on phone calls.

And, employees have no privacy or quiet to work.

Employees are less productive in general if they're listening to 100 phones ring all day, tons of printers going, a hundred people sneezing/laughing/coughing, etc. And, one person catches a cold, it spreads fast.

I had to laugh when I saw this thread. My office currently has offices for all of our employees (who are all NT), and I suggested we move to an open office floor plan. We are doing that this August.

I personally prefer an office, but I can tune out my coworkers when I focus on something. The things that annoy me about office environments occur whatever kind of work space I have.

My workplace is currently moving from cubicles to an open plan. How well I adapt is going to depend on how it's implemented. If the walls are high enough that I won't see anyone else walk by when I'm sitting down, I should fare OK with a pair of headphones.

My office is a big room with at least 50 people working at computers. Fortunately, phone calls are rare. Still, it can be very noisy and annoying. I'd rather be in a room with one or two more people.

The worst thing I have come across so far, though, is the open desk practice - i.e. having to look for a seat/docking station every day. I had that during office Fridays in my previous job, and it made me very anxious. I much prefer to have a stable desk with my stuff on it and the same people around.

I worked in that kind of open plan environment once..... lasted only a few months.

About 15 people, including sales-staff. Every single day, all day, I was constantly within an inch of a meltdown.
Sudden noises, talking and ringing phones totally destroyed my concentration. Went to the toilet many times each day just for some solitude and silence.

Mostly, I was exhausted at noon, and essentially didn't get anything done for the rest of the day.

Even worse. On some days, I was in charge of the phone support. Those interruptions didn't make anything better.

Don't think earplugs is the solution to me. Can't stand earplugs, especially the way they amplify all noises when you move and breathe.

It's so nice to come here and see I am not the only one who has problems with open plan offices and cube farms.

I recently left a job where I'd been for almost 14 years to try a new place. It was way past time to do this, engagement-wise, but, leaving was hard. Going from knowing everything and everyone to starting all over was difficult.

One thing I knew would be an issue was the change in office structure... but, even knowing it, it's difficult to cope with.

I really miss my old office. My own space, even if my boss was streaming music or listening to his voicemails on speakerphone, I could shut the door. I usually left it open, though. Of course, being the only female on the Engineering staff, I used to get interrupted by people for menial things all the time, so, after our last office move, my boss gave me the office at the far end of our suite, so people wouldn't bother me constantly. Amazingly good of him to do so. Also, no windows.
And, when I had to work mobile out of one of our other spaces, I found them bright and noisy, but, only being in them for short periods, I wore headphones and sunglasses.

Now? I work on the top floor of our main building with massive windows , right across the lobby from the owner of the company. I really feel that headphones and sunglasses aren't professional enough for our company, so I do not wear them.
On holidays, we can leave the lights off if the owner isn't in, but, the windows still make it pretty bright.

I've managed okay. Even suddenly working around women for the first time since my time in accounting as a teenager, I coped okay, as they all have nice timbre and aren't high-pitched or negative.

We just got a new girl in though, who is younger and more high-pitched. I feel horrible that I want to avoid talking to her, because her giggling just sets my teeth on edge. She's smart and funny, but, I cannot stand to listen to her talk. I spoke to my boss about it and he is allowing me to move my desk from one of the center cubes to one on the edge.
Of course, that has a drawback, too, of being closer to the meeting rooms, so all of the brokers, etc that come out of a meeting are yammering and being a distraction as well.
And, don't get me started on more women in the building meaning less time I can ride elevators and have to take the stairs instead... I. Hate. Perfume. ~gag~

In addition to headphones, some of you have mentioned ear plugs. I might try to find some flesh-toned ear plugs that aren't as visible and give those a go.

I really love my coworkers and my job is exactly what I wanted (system administration), but, I am finding the physical environment to be a huge challenge for me.
I don't want to make a big deal of it here, because, it's obvious enough that I'm a bit different for my upbringing (poverty and related parental challenges versus their more traditional and semi-affluent childhood experiences), that I don't want myself to appear to be even more of a freak.

Anyway, thanks, I had to rant someplace where people wouldn't look at me like I've got lobsters crawling out of my ears.
My husband is an extrovert NT and does not at all empathize with my sensory difficulties.

Oh wow, that sounds like absolute hell. I'd never even heard of this in the professional environment. I used to dread school classes where there was an open-desk policy, and felt much more secure in classes where the teacher had an inflexible seating plan for everyone. Not only my love of routine and structure, but also having few friends at school made me nervous every time I went to a class with no assigned seats. I'm ashamed to admit that I even skipped lunch altogether when I knew that my 3 or 4 friends were not going to be there. I got the same nervousness in science classes when you had to partner up for chemistry experiments and so forth.

Back to topic, sorry! My office used to be open-plan, then the company changed things around and now we've been split into 5 offices, each containing between 10 and 15 people. I prefer this to the old open-plan system, except now I am seated near completely different people, so have had to learn to make small-talk with new people - these people were in the old office but not near me so I didn't socalise with them at all before. In the old office, I was at least able to converse with the people near me, and was sad that this little group got split up.

Some of the more extroverted employees were very upset at the move to smaller offices, some even making harsh judgments of the employees who requested to be in smaller offices rather than larger ones (which have about 15-20 people). There is one very small room of 4 desks which the managers got priority for, and one of my loud colleagues (the type who can make 20 good friends on her first day with zero effort and be invited to parties every weekend) was very critical of them, saying that it wasn't very team-oriented or sociable. Work is for work, socialising comes second to that!

~cringe~ Oh, the small talk thing. When conversations are happening over the walls, when do I join in? If I don't join in, I'm anti-social (they always talk bad about the last employee who never spoke to anyone), then when I do join in... I'm detail oriented, when have I gone on too long or diverted too badly from the topic? Skim the topic, then I feel dishonest as if I'm obfuscating details just to make the story more entertaining. It's enough to make me freeze up some days.

Oooh, I'm very jealous of the manager's small room there. I agree, socialising isn't the main priority while you're being paid.

Indeed! I can relate to this. You don't want to be centre of attention but you also don't want to be completely left out. I sometimes feel nosy joining in trivial conversations that don't initially involve me, but feel I should make the effort sometimes with the whole Aspie social limitations issue and where small-talk takes great effort - getting some while it's easy is important!

Exactly!
It's the hardest part about breaking into a new group of people, but, I'll get more comfortable over time, I hope.

The worst part is elevator chatting. I used to work in more remote offices where only people in my department rode with me, now it's hundreds of people. Listening to the trite and vacuous statements of the others I've ridden with have given me a few handy go-to phrases when someone says anything more complicated than good morning.

~sighs~ Met with my boss this morning and while catching him up on my projects, he mentioned that the other manager with employees in this cube farm does not want me to move to that cube (I don't know the reasoning), but, he is going to their boss and asking her to intervene and let me have it.

I have let him know a couple of times that the talking and movement is distracting and I really appreciate that he's taken that seriously, but, I really don't want to have to talk about my weaknesses with the other manager, whom I do not communicate all that well with anyway.
She is also one of my users and needs to respect my technical expertise, but, I worry that showing personal weaknesses would not help strengthen that. ~shrugs~ Just a hunch, perhaps I'm not giving her enough credit.

I am now retired, but a few years ago, all of the people in the office in which I worked were due to be transferred to a newly refurbished open plan office. (It is probably redundant to observe that employers like open plan offices because you can get more people in the same overall space and thus reduce infrastructure costs - they rarely consider the effect on productivity.) Within that new office I was provided, as a reasonable adjustment (accommodation), with my own single occupancy room (not a cubicle), which had to be specially constructed. In reality, it probably did not cost a great deal - stud walls, insulation, plasterboard (sheetrock) and a door. The circumstances in which this occurred were that an independent medical expert had previously suggested that a single occupancy room would be a reasonable adjustment and a bald threat from me of legal action if one was not provided which, on that basis of past experience, my employer was well aware that I was absolutely prepared to take and in which I was very likely to prevail.

The benefits of a single occupancy room within an open plan office cannot be underestimated. You can go into your own room, shut the door behind you and relax, because you are within your own ASD friendly micro-environment. You may still hear the general office noise, but it will be muted and is a lot easier to ignore if you do not see, or feel the presence of, those making it. I still interacted with other people in the office, but usually only on business related matters and, as far as I was aware, other people in the office soon got used to the arrangement and didn't have a problem with it. Apart fro the fact that you may be able to establish a legal right to such an accommodation, it also makes business sense, since, if you are working in a congenial environment, then you are likely to be much more productive/ efficient, far outweighing the costs of the provision of it (but best of luck in persuading and employer, voluntarily, to this point of view).

In summary, this is something that is achievable, but it isn't easy to do.