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19 October 2012
Because I have absolutely no sense of propriety, I'd like to ask a question.→[More:]
Q. Someone is on a conference call. They're in an office, which has a door, which is open. Is it rude to walk over and close their door?
part 2: Same question, but they're a VP in your company, very high up, very senior.
I think it might be rude, unless there is so much noise outside that they could think that you were protecting them from the outside and not the other way around. And especially with #2, I would tread lightly.
Oh no, the broadcasting is quite rude. But so is an action that comes off as an overt correction of rudeness, which is what I think people are cautioning against. :-)
I've done this exact thing. I think it's brutal enough to be expected to work productively in a cubicle environment without having to listen to noise from people WITH FUCKING DOORS.
Having said that, I might have just put my headphones on, if the person in question was a high-ranking management type, I can't say for sure.
I really don't think it's rude. I'm just cognizant of the fragile egos of upper management. Seriously, to blare a conference call in an office environment? THAT'S rude.
One time I dropped a note in the company suggestion box about this issue. There did seem to be a definite and sudden improvement in execs closing their doors while on their phone, so maybe an email got sent out. But the improvement didn't last.
We have this problem at my workplace, where our CEO is in the habit of having phone conversations via speakerphone and he has a very loud voice. Because of the layout of our office, the noise carries all the way around the floor. Nobody is going to ask him to close the door or close it for him. I'm fortunate that I have a door that I can close, but most staff aren't so lucky.
I think the answer to your question depends almost entirely on the personality of the loud talker in question. I don't think it would be actually rude to close their door, but many people would perceive it that way.
One nice thing about my office is that all of the upper management is 2500 miles away. We see them every so often on video conferences but mostly they leave us alone and let us work.
At my last big corporate job, there was one guy who got to work about the same time I did, so we often parked close together. He was terrible at parking. I saw his cube one day and he had a big poster of Steve Jobs with "Think Different" written on it. The next time I had to park near him (he was double parked of course) I got out a piece of paper and wrote "Park Different" on it (with serifs) and put it on his windshield. I felt bad about it soon after, but he did stop double parking.
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