The joy of colleague-cancelling headphones 

I’m writing this with headphones in, sitting at my desk on Old Queen Street. Please don’t tell Debrett’s. Apparently listening to headphones in the office is a huge faux pas, akin to cutting camembert with a fish knife. The company’s etiquette adviser, Liz Wyse, told the Times: ‘If you work in an open-plan office where there is frequent conversation and interchange of ideas between colleagues, do not wear AirPods or headphones.’ 

We will, she assures us, be ‘much more valuable staff members’ if we instead choose to ‘tune into conversations’ and ‘stay alert’. Beep boop. Jeeves3000 has spoken. Modern manners are about productivity, you pop-addled layabout. But ask anyone who works in an office and they’ll tell you that headphones are among the greatest contributors to efficiency, up there with filter coffee and a lax policy on desk vaping.