Right then, picture this if you will. You walk into that massive open plan floor at the bank on a Monday morning and the noise hits you like a proper Essex bus on a rainy day. Chatter everywhere. Keyboards clacking like they are having a competition. Someone laughing too loud about last night’s episode of whatever reality rubbish they stayed up watching. And me? I am already building my invisible wall before I even sit down.
I have been supervising this little team of under twenty fives for a couple of years now and let me tell you something. The open plan setup is meant to make us all collaborative and friendly and full of team spirit. What it actually does is turn the whole place into a giant echo chamber of nonsense. You try concentrating on a spreadsheet that needs to balance by lunchtime when three desks over someone is discussing their new fake nails in forensic detail. Or worse, the latest office romance that never actually happened but gets treated like breaking news. I swear some of these girls could write a whole soap opera out of a shared biscuit tin.
My job is numbers. Proper solid numbers that either add up or they do not. There is no room for fluff when you are checking the daily figures or sorting out a client query that has gone sideways. So I protect that focus like it is the last slice of roast potato at Sunday dinner. And trust me, growing up in Basildon taught me a thing or two about guarding what matters. You learn early that if you do not look after your own plate someone else will nick it. Same rule applies here in East London.
People think I am harsh. They are not entirely wrong. I set clear lines and I stick to them. When one of the younger ones wanders over for the third time that hour to ask something they could have checked themselves I give them the look. You know the one. The quiet stare that says I am busy and you are interrupting something important. It works most of the time. They scuttle back to their desks and suddenly discover the answer was sitting in the shared folder all along. Magic.
But it is not just the chatty ones that test me. It is the constant background hum. The printers whirring. The phones ringing with that cheerful hold music that makes you want to throw the handset out the window. The bloke from another team who thinks it is hilarious to walk past every twenty minutes and drop a one liner that is never as funny as he believes. I have developed this little trick. I stare at the screen so hard that everything else fades. Numbers become my quiet place. Columns of figures line up like soldiers and I can march through them without hearing half the rubbish floating around me.
Sometimes I wonder how anyone gets anything done in these places. We are all supposed to be agile and flexible and ready for spontaneous brainstorming. What a load of old cobblers. Spontaneous brainstorming usually means three people talking over each other while the rest of us pretend to listen and secretly check our phones under the desk. I have sat through enough of those sessions to know that the real work happens when everyone shuts up and gets on with their own tasks. Collaboration is lovely in theory. In practice it often just means your concentration gets shredded into tiny pieces and scattered across the floor.
There was this one week last month that properly tested me. Month end approaching. Targets looking tight. And the office decided it was the perfect time for a cake sale to raise money for some charity or other. Fair enough, I like a bit of cake as much as the next person. But the constant parade of people wandering past with trays, the debates about whether the brownies were better than the flapjacks, the inevitable spill of crumbs near my keyboard. I ended up staying late three nights running just to get the reports finished without interruption. Was I annoyed? Of course I was. Did I moan about it in the team meeting the next morning? Softly and with a smile so no one could call me difficult. That is the game. Keep the stern face for the moments that matter and save the real frustration for the walk home through Hackney.
I am not saying open plan offices are the devil. There are days when the energy feels good. When the team is buzzing because we have hit a target and everyone is sharing that little win. Those moments are rare and I treasure them. But most of the time the chatter is just noise that gets in the way of actual results. And results are what keep the lights on. They are what pay our wages and keep the clients happy. Fitting in with the latest office gossip might make you popular for five minutes. Delivering clean numbers month after month makes you reliable. I know which one I would rather be known for.
My competitive side comes out strongest when the distractions pile up. I refuse to let a noisy environment beat me. So I create my own little routines. Arrive early before the full chaos starts. Tackle the hardest tasks first while my brain is still fresh. Keep a running list of priorities that I check every hour so I do not drift. And when someone really needs me I give them my full attention for those few minutes then gently steer them back to their own work. It is not rocket science. It is just discipline mixed with a healthy dose of not caring too much what anyone thinks of my methods.
You should see the looks I get when I decline another invitation to the after work drinks that always turn into three hours of rehashing the same office stories. I smile, say I have plans, and head off. Sometimes those plans are just a quiet night in trackies with a takeaway and a bit of rubbish television. Other times I am on the train back to Basildon for the family roast. Either way I am protecting my energy so I can come back the next day ready to focus again. The younger ones think I am boring. Let them. They will learn soon enough that burning the candle at both ends only leaves you with melted wax and a headache.
There is a funny thing that happens when you guard your concentration this fiercely. People start respecting it even if they do not admit it out loud. The ones who used to interrupt for every tiny thing now email instead. The constant drop ins slow down. And slowly the space around my desk becomes a little quieter by default. It is not perfect. Open plan will never be a silent library. But it is better than it was when I first took the supervisor role. Progress, even the small kind, feels good.
I still catch myself getting pulled into the odd conversation. A quick chat about the weekend or a shared moan about the coffee machine. Those moments keep things human. I am not a robot and I do not want to be. But I am careful. I set a mental timer. Five minutes of banter then back to the screen. Anything longer and the numbers start slipping and that is when the competitive streak flares up. I hate falling behind. Hate it more than I hate the sound of someone chewing loudly three desks away. And that is saying something.
Living in East London has its own soundtrack of sirens and street talk and late night buses. Coming into the bank should feel like a step into order. Instead it often feels like the same chaos just with better air conditioning. So I fight for those pockets of focus. I treat them like precious little islands in a sea of noise. When I am deep in a complex reconciliation or sorting a tricky client issue the rest of the world can wait. The gossip can wait. The cake debates can wait. Even the well meaning questions can wait a few minutes. Because once that focus breaks it takes ages to rebuild and by then the afternoon is half gone.
My team knows the drill by now. If my headphones are on, even if there is no music playing, leave me be unless the building is on fire. If I am typing at speed do not hover. If I answer in short sentences it is not personal. It is simply me protecting the work. Most of them get it. The ones who do not learn the hard way when their own deadlines start slipping because they spent the morning chatting instead of grafting. I do not lecture. I just raise an eyebrow and let the results speak for themselves. Silence can be a powerful teacher.
There are days when the sarcasm bubbles up stronger than usual. Someone will start a conversation about the latest productivity app that promises to revolutionise the way we work and I will think to myself that the real revolution would be everyone shutting up for two hours. Or a manager will wander through talking about synergy and I will picture synergy as some mythical creature that only appears when no one is speaking. These thoughts stay inside my head of course. Out loud I nod and smile and get back to the actual work. That is the balance. Keep the stern professional face while the private commentary runs wild.
I have lost count of the times I have stayed late just to finish something without interruption. The office empties and suddenly the space feels different. Quieter. Almost peaceful. The screens glow and the only sound is the hum of the air con. Those are the hours when I get the most done. When the numbers dance into place and the reports write themselves. I leave feeling lighter even if the clock says I should be exhausted. Because focus, real uninterrupted focus, is its own kind of reward.
Looking ahead I do not expect the open plan world to change anytime soon. Companies love the idea of everyone being visible and available. What they forget is that availability without boundaries just creates more noise. So I will keep doing what I do. Protect the concentration. Deliver the results. Stay a little separate from the endless chatter. And every now and then allow myself a quiet smile when another month closes clean and on time. That smile is for me alone. It is the small private victory that makes all the patience worthwhile.
In the end it comes down to this. I care about doing the job properly. I care about my team hitting their targets without unnecessary drama. And I care enough about my own sanity to refuse to let the constant distractions win. The open plan floor can keep its noise and its gossip and its spontaneous interruptions. I will keep my focus. And if that makes me the stern one, the quiet one, the one who sometimes seems a bit distant, then so be it. The numbers never lie. And neither do the results.
