<p>What does hearing loss have to do with the OP’s question? It seems like you guys are going back and forth like a bunch of elementary school kids over who is the better soccer player.</p>
<p>As someone who cannot concentrate with noise in the background – I work at home most days and still close my door to keep out any noise – if I walk into someone’s office with music playing audibly, I can’t concentrate. If that person isn’t like me – and needs / likes music to keep them focused and energized – I’d SO rather them do it with earphones than audibly.</p>
<p>At my old job, I always had either a radio on or listened to tapes or CD’s in my boombox thing that my kids bought me for mother’s day one year. When the phone rang, I would hit the off button before answering. I loved having music in my office and kept it low enough for me to hear but not anyone else. I had my own office.</p>
<p>At my current job, I have my own office as well but because I now take public transportation, I haven’t been able to bring my boom box iin. My computer plays CDs but doesn’t have audio. I find that I read the news on line a lot more since I no longer have a radio on. I only listened to music stations, I am not a talk or news radio person.</p>
<p>By the way, I am in my 50’s, clearly no longer a kid.</p>
<p>Couldn’t you just put an audio card in your computer?</p>
<p>We are required to be available for audio conferences or video conferences via computer and have to take mandated training courses for ethics, sexual harassment, insider trading, etc. and these are taken on workplace computers so they have to be multimedia-enabled.</p>
<p>I’m with IloveLA–I wouldn’t use earphones or earbuds as an intern because it says, “Don’t approach me.” As an intern, you want people interaction.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t wear headphones to listen to music while I’m at work, but we often have music on. We also have the TV’s on too. At one place that I work, the music is streamed through Pandora often because the radio doesn’t work too well.</p>
<p>Just another benefit of working in the fitness and healthcare profession…</p>
<p>“I’m with IloveLA–I wouldn’t use earphones or earbuds as an intern because it says, “Don’t approach me.” As an intern, you want people interaction.”</p>
<p>I agree, but I also think that being an intern – being low on the totem pole – and playing audible music comes across as immature, like you can’t get through the day without your tunes.</p>
<p>We discussed this exact issue recently. A friend of mine who works in the office near my older son’s desk gave me a heads up that he that he was wearing headphones. While you could not hear the music coming out of the headphones, and the area in which he works is pretty loud and it is probably sometimes hard to focus and get your work done, it was not at all common for people to wear headphones in this office. Parental response was swift: emails from both of us suggesting that he lose the headphones ASAP. His first response was that it had been common practice at his previous job to wear them, but he ended up agreeing with us after surveying the floor at his new office. I think it comes down to what is accepted practice in the office you are working in - and I do think younger employees need to pay careful attention to what others around them are doing.</p>