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Comment by iheartpotatoes | Hacker News Reader

When I got my tech job out of college in the 80's I was embarrassed because most of my friends in non-tech (especially finance) had offices with doors that closed. Sometimes nice wooden doors.

It took a lot of getting used to: constant chatter, loud talkers, ice chewers, mouth noises, farting, personal phone calls that were too personal... But I acclimated.

I continued to work in a 9'x9'x (x5' high) cube for 25+ years and the last company I worked for switched to an open floorplan for my last 3 years there.

IT WAS HELL. At least in my small cube I had some sense of privacy, but now everyone could see my screen, or see me having to deal with various biological discomforts, it just sucked. I'm glad I became a contractor 5 years ago because it is great to be out of that mess. Hopefully I'll never have to return.

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Yes, I think that is the thing that people forget- most people aren't even asking for an office with a door the cube farm is fine. Or at least even some dividers to break up the noise so that the incidental noise/people around you are only there for you. Just seeing people walk past is intensely distracting to me, headphones don't fix that. Even if there was some more logical dividers so at least the people grouped together are in a joint space rather than a totally open space it works much better. When over 60% of conversation/noise/people moving around is not useful information it doesn't really help.

Cubicles are nice for getting work done, but they make for boring office photographs, and every company nowadays wants to be a hip place to work. Nobody wants to look like the Initech from Office Space.

"ice chewers, mouth noises, farting"

My kryptonite is nail clipping.

>ice chewers

Were they literally chewing ice or is this some idiom?

Some people love to literally crush ice in their mouth.

I cannot stand it. On top of just being an annoying sound, it makes me think about / feel pain, because it sounds like it really hurts.

I love it, but it does tend to freak out at least a few people. They claim I'll crack my teeth or something, but that's probably just a cover for how it makes them feel.

Yes, it could be bad for my teeth, but that's likely not why they're telling me about it. It bothers them more than it concerns them, or they'd stop telling me about it after a few times.

Literally would crunch ice from a big metal cup ALL DAY LONG (walk to the soda fountain in the break room and refill with ice every hour).

I encountered two people like this in my life. It would make me physically ill, like an allergy, but no one else around us complained so I tried to get over it and ended up just working in a lab.

I'm old enough now were it to happen again I'd flood every channel with complaints until we arrived at a compromise, but I was younger then.

> It would make me physically ill

This is a classic instance of misophonia. Certain sounds, especially sounds related to eating, generate disproportionate and irrational reactions, often (internally) physical. Anything from fear to disgust to anger, with the accompanying bodily state.

Ice chewing is a 'possible' symptom of anemia : https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/iron-deficien...

I sat next to a literal ice-chewer.

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