At least it ends. I work in a gigantic "airplane hangar" open office with no noise barriers of any kind stretching out to infinity. Everybody around me is on conference calls all day, every day. They put their phones on speaker and then yell louder and louder to be heard over each other. One of them is even one of the Important People with an office with a door that closes... which he leaves open all the time anyway.
This unfortunately doesn’t work because these types of over-ear sound blockers are extremely physically uncomfortable. I can’t get work done while wearing anything like that because it feels like my head is being squeezed.
This is the big problem with headphones as a solution. You just trade sound disergonomy or physical discomfort, and it solves nothing. Like breaking your finger to distract from the pain of a gun shot wound.
Combine it with the fact that managers have repeatedly told me that wearing earplugs is “rude” and it’s just more of the no-win optics that drive open plan offices in the first place.
I've found any earplug or headphone option will make my tinnitus worse - sometimes days afterwards.
I explain my tinnitus to non-sufferers as being on the threshold of noise intolerance 24/7.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a lawsuit against any of these companies that expect employees to damage their health just so they can save on floorspace?
I've also wondered about that. I didn't feel like I had tinnitus (I have a very mild one) until after I moved my apartment to a noisier street and wore earplugs for about 2 weeks.
Now I have a very faint one that "toggles" once or twice a week and ALWAYS when I wear earplugs.
Are you suggesting that I get checked for an ear infection or saying that I should stop using ear plugs? I have pretty much done the latter, only wearing them for the occasional nap once every other week.
I'm suggesting if you ever do get an ear infection to seek medical attention asap.
I had a random infection a few years ago and just waited for it to pass. Which it did, eventually, but my tinnitus became much worse afterwards. I'm guessing, because the infection did further damage which could maybe have been avoided?
I can't say whether you should stop wearing earplugs because you may sometimes be in a situation where they protect your hearing. But, for blocking out background noise in an office, they're probably not a good idea?
[based purely on my own experience]
Same here! I had very faint tinnitus (from headphones in the office all day), but after we moved offices (open office space) and I started wearing earplugs UNDER my hearing protection earmuffs, my tinnitus started going wild.
I think it's because when you double-stuff like I did, the only thing you can hear at that point is the ringing in your ears (and high heels on concrete floors). My brain seemed to lock in on the ringing at that point.
You could go the opposite route: good earplugs with good noise canceling over-ear headphones. The advantage of this over the other setup is that the minimum effective volume from music is lower, protecting against tinnitus. I had the same issues and found this setup works well for me.
As an added bonus the obvious rigamarole I have to go through when a coworker taps me on the shoulder makes them more likely to send an email next time.
I prefer the music to come from the headphones because my in-ear phones can be overly loud, even on the lowest volume setting on my phone. Having music coming from them hours every day had me feeling like I was damaging my hearing.
With earplugs inside noise-canceling phones I still get two layers of sound isolation but have a layer of sound isolation between me and the phones, providing finer volume control so I can add just enough music to finish the job of drowning out loud people around me without hearing damage.
At the risk of sounding like a shill, I recently picked up a set of Noisefigher Sightlines (https://noisefighters.com). They're replacement ear pads with a notch cut out for glasses. My glasses don't fit in perfectly, but the frames put noticeably less pressure on my head now.
Laser eye surgery is a fantastic choice for many people, especially people who are nearsighted, under 40, and don't have any contraindications. It's less effective[1] and riskier[2] for farsightedness, and there's only so much it can do for presbyopia. It's also riskier for people who have autoimmune disorders, immune deficiencies, diabetes, or dry eyes.
It's also great for correcting astigmatism. The nearsightedness that I got corrected was reasonably well managed by glasses, but my astigmatism was compensated for by my brain. I got noticeably more well-coordinated after laser eye surgery freed up visual processing ability this way, and I've heard other anecdotal evidence of this phenomena as well.
Tbh, a good pair of 'closed back' full size headphones with noise cancellation would do just a good job (if not better musically) as wearing ear defenders over earphones.
At least it ends. I work in a gigantic "airplane hangar" open office with no noise barriers of any kind stretching out to infinity. Everybody around me is on conference calls all day, every day. They put their phones on speaker and then yell louder and louder to be heard over each other. One of them is even one of the Important People with an office with a door that closes... which he leaves open all the time anyway.