At my workplace, HR addressed RTO and said that even when people aren't working together, just seeing people around invigorates them. Kind of demeaning to think that part of my pay comes from HR enjoying seeing the back of my head while I'm hunched over my laptop.

And there's the people that more or less require the use of headphones if you want to get anything done: the two or three people that continually narrate every aspect of what they're doing loud enough for everyone to hear, the handful of people who desperately need attention and validation at every possible juncture, the project managers having a ball pretending every day is an episode of The Office, and if you're really unlucky, the fire alarm that goes off at random intervals throughout the day that everyone's learned how to ignore.

Some older people don't hear well so they talk louder due to that. It's not that they intend to be loud, it's just they don't hear as well as younger people do. Many vets also having hearing loss due to service related injuries. So next time you hear someone talking loud... remember that.

Yeah, in my open space office there's an old guy that talks in Teams calls all day like he learned to whisper in a helicopter, and me and others complained to management about him disturbing everyone trying to focus on our work, and boss said "he's deaf, what do you want us to do about it, give him a private office?" and my answer in my head was "no, but have you heard of this wild idea called WFH where people can't disturb others or get disturbed by others talking too loud? Crazy idea, right?"