Closing your office door all the time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My door is opened and closed a million times a day. I keep it closed when I am on a call (ahem -- neighbors, please take heed) or when I am eating at my desk. I keep it open when I don't mind people stopping by. Sometimes though I just have to shut it for most of the day because I really have to get stuff done. When it's open I get interrupted constantly.

Ditto. I close the door for most calls and for lunch. Otherwise I tend to keep it open, knowing that people will likely interrupt. If I really need to get something done, I close it, and usually am not interrupted then except for something important. I will say the closed door is respected much more than it used to be. Holdover from when I was pumping after maternity leave, I think -- even though I no longer have a sign on the door, my male colleagues are terrified to interrupt. So I use the power of the closed door sparingly.

I am also a lawyer. And grateful for my own office.

[Anonymous]

I generally keep my door open. /but when I'm concentrating on something I keep it closed to deter the drive-by chatters.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it's a big deal. In my office, people close their doors when super-busy. I do think being social and personable with coworkers is important, but that doesn't have to happen while you are working in your office.

[Anonymous]

I'm a legal secretary and LOVE the attorneys who close their doors. Because at least I won't have to hear you shouting on your speaker phone.

Your colleagues don't care - they just ask me if I think you're free, and I tell them they can knock. Let the secretaries who sit right outside your door know why you close it, so they can answer people appropriately.

[Anonymous]

We have a cube farm and when people want privacy they just drag their cardboard doors across the entrance to their cube. You can hear when someone drags their door shut and then you know not to bother them.

[Anonymous]

OP, I don't think it's healthy for you to breathe the toner fumes from the printer all day every day. Can you move?

[Anonymous]

Headphones -classical music- and door opened (at least for sometime during the day)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The woman with the office across the hall from me is on speakerphone literally all day long. Sometimes it starts as a client call with one of our colleagues down the hall on the phone, and when the client call concludes, the two people who work 3 doors apart call each other to debrief, both of them on speakerphone.

It is the most obnoxious thing ever and I wish that they would close their doors. Maybe they do not, for fear of being seen as antisocial and weird rather than just rude and disruptive.

People that use speakerphone for other than conference calls when other people are in the room are unprofessional. It sounds really stupid on the other end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a cube farm and when people want privacy they just drag their cardboard doors across the entrance to their cube. You can hear when someone drags their door shut and then you know not to bother them.

OMG. Do they have cardboard doorbells too or do you need to stand there and go "ding dong!" if you really need to talk to them?

[Anonymous]

I think it's okay, but in the interest of good relations/office harmony I would set aside a little bit if time each day to join in collegial chit-chat. It's fair to want quiet space, but it's human nature to be suspicious of someone who stays closed off all the time.

[Anonymous]

I envy you people with doors. Signed, introverted worker forced to sit near loud people in an open office environment