Does anyone else have any ideas?

Not any ideas, really, but just a description of my work environment, which sounds like it should be awful but actually works pretty well.

One room 23 x 46 feet, no partitions of any kind, 10 large desks in three rows, completely open environment.

What makes it work is that rarely are more than four or five desks occupied at once. Right now, I am the only person in the room. Since all of us have to informally interact just about all the time (Example: "Denise -- the copy for Budget Auto Sales has expired, do you want me to extend it?") it is much easier to just call across the room, rather than walk over or email or telephone. It is usually pretty quiet, so "calling across the room" is really just speaking in a conversational voice.

The nature of my work most of the time is intense but repetitive, pattern matching and watching for error dialog boxes (not enough separation between commercials for the same client, for example), requiring great alertness but very little cognitive power, making it an ideal situation to keep my earphones in just about all the time, usually listening to audiobooks.

Maybe it shouldn't work, but it does.

tanstaafl.