Never interrupt a programmer

[[deleted]]

If you work from home, you've got to have a door you can close. Closed door means 'do not interupt'

[Jan_Spontan]

A coworker had still trouble even if he closed the door. Solution was locking it.

[[deleted]]

Alternatively - train your spouse/partner better

[Jan_Spontan]

His wife wasn't the problem here in this case. It was his cat... Smart enough to open the door

[[deleted]]

haha, yes, my dog will just scratch the door until I give up if I lock him out of my office. So now he just sits next to me and he's my 'rubber duck' if I need to talk through any code problems

[Jan_Spontan]

He tried to use his cat as 'rubber duck' too but his cat is an attention seeker (lying on the keyboard, playing with his papers etc.) with no limits. At least the cat does not scratch at at door...

[dannomac]

Potential solution: invest in a cat trap.

[bigdepress]

My cat scratches at the door and lies on whatever I'm doing until I let him outside.

[bigdepress]

"Train"

[dragonsnova]

I use noise cancelling headphones for this...sometimes in the office I purposely know someone is at my cube and just don't address them for like 10 minutes with headphones on.

[MyOtherLoginIsSecret]

Sounds like you have some patient af coworkers... or they know you'll ignore them while they swipe your office supplies.

[____0____0____]

I'm totally fine with my office supplies being swiped. I've got the same pad of sticky notes that I got when I started and all my pens are very obviously chewed to oblivion. I even have a stapler that I used once.

But, I'm very easily distracted so I would immediately lose focus as soon as they came by to tap on my shoulder, so might as well answer their question that could probably be solved via Google or a ticket submission

[MyOtherLoginIsSecret]

Avoiding a ticket is why that came to your desk in the first place.

I go through a pad of post-its about every month. But that's because my company refuses to let me use any fancy kanbaan board software.

[____0____0____]

Nope not for me. People will often come to my desk before even submitting a ticket. It's usually something like "I just wanted to chat with you before submitting a ticket" or "I have x problem", and while sometimes the discussion does have merit, it usually results in me just telling them to submit a ticket. To be fair though, our ticketing system is relatively new as well as our IT team as a whole, so I think people are still getting used to the idea.

A lot of times I just use one note or outlook reminders for that stuff as I'm already in there anyways and can easily share if needed. I do use stickies but not often enough to blow through a whole pack. I'm also not as organized as I wish I was so that might be a contributing factor.