Maybe you’ve had this experience: You’re in crisis. You can’t work, so you call in. A well-meaning person you hardly know sends you information about the Employee Assistance Program (EAP). You look into what it covers and wonder how this could possibly help. The minimum CYA measure to guard against the wild things that people in crisis do.

Open-floor-plan offices may not compare to the shipyards, manufacturing plants, and airports that first brought over-ear headphones to the workplace. But noise pollution is still a serious issue in knowledge work.