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We receive a surprisingly large number of consultations about noise.

6 Comments

Tsuyoshi Miyamoto, a certified public psychologist and president of Mental Link Inc, which provides corporate training on anti-harassment measures and counseling for employees. Complaints about workplace noise that have surfaced on social media include not only loud typing but the sounds of desk drawers being closed with great force, and computer mice being slammed against desks.

© Mainichi Shimbun

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Computer mice being slammed against desks

Stress in Japanese workplace? Is that something new?

-8 ( +6 / -14 )

Why have we become so intolerant? I know modern life is much more stressful than it was before, but loud typing and drawers closing with force! Are we going to have to provide a kind of cone of silence for all workers so they are not disturbed. For you young people google Maxwell Smart for the reference.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

Full travel keyboards - for my money the best choice - can be quite loud. I guess in workplaces, quieter options could be purchased. Loud mouse use could be eradicated with a trackpad. Perhaps people can move desks to avoid it - an easier fix than if the noise is coming from the next door apartment. I've had the odd loud neighbour in Japan - radio or music at 1.30am etc. Japanese apartment walls are not particularly thick. Every now and again there is a report of violence over it.

Although some people are just unpleasantly loud, one might consider all this slamming of drawers and abuse of innocent mice to be a sign of bottled up rage. Maybe get them to the company shrink before they go postal with the stapler.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Just the usual amount of passive-aggressive behavior. Par for the course.

-4 ( +7 / -11 )

when I was working in a shared office, I had to buy noise-cancelling headphones. I didn't care about keyboard, mouse or furniture sounds, but it seemed that any time I had to finish an important task, some dude would start noisily slurping his instant ramen next to my desk; then there was this guy who was eating bento by placing it next to his mouth and sucking its contents whole; then the notorious sniffers, but not the normal ones, we had some really inhumane sounding, bone chilling, horrifying types.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

You've got to be kidding. At the workplace? Loud typing and slamming drawers?

How about the hot rodders on the streets at night time? Noisy neighbors singing and shouting in the early hours of the morning? The constant music and shouting inside supermarkets? The loudspeakers from the politicians during election time?

0 ( +3 / -3 )

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