Message to Employees Regarding Pets, Children, and Other Distractions in the Workplace

One of the reasons you accepted the job offer from your current employer was the happy, relaxed vibe of the open-plan office. When you interviewed, it seemed as far away from a boring, conventional “cubicle farm” as you could get, which appealed to your nonconformist instincts. After a year in the job, however, you’ve experienced some of the disadvantages of the company’s relaxed attitudes toward just about every aspect of workplace behavior. People routinely bring pets to work, even though several people have explained they have allergies to dogs or cats. Some of the pets are less than ideally behaved, too, and a couple of dogs who are frequent visitors get into snarling matches when they see each other. One person even brings a pet bird, which has been known to fly loose around the office. Employees bring children of all ages to work, too, from infants still in diapers to teenagers who play video games on mobile devices—sometimes using headphones but sometimes not. Music lovers get into volume wars at least once a week, trying to drown each other out on their portable speaker systems.
You wonder how anybody can get any work done, until you privately interview several colleagues and realize that, like you, they aren’t getting any work done. The office has become such a festival of distractions that people routinely bring work home on nights and weekends because home is the only place they can concentrate.
Your task: Write a brief request that could be sent out via the company’s internal messaging system, asking people to consider the needs of their colleagues before bringing pets, children, and other potential distractions into the workplace.
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