What do you think about eavesdropping

Knowing more about your colleagues can build rapport — but knowing too much can damage trust Credit: Alamy. Overhearing, on the other hand, is the non-malicious consequence of the growing open office trend. The open office set up has blurred the line between public and private conversations, says Joshua Juneau, a real estate agent at New York property start-up TripleMint.

After complaining to a nearby colleague about how a buyer pulled out of a purchase for one of his real estate listings, a co-worker across the room piped in by saying he had a perfect buyer for the home.

The result is an office where most employees keep their ears peeled for news. For truly private matters, Juno uses instant messaging programs rather than whispering to his colleague, he adds. Not all eavesdropping is necessarily bad. And even on a personal level, shifting your attention to focus on other conversations can create small distractions, forcing employees to constantly move between the task in front of them and the task of listening to others in the office, Emberson finds in her research.

For those trying to master the art of light-hearted eavesdropping, less is more, says Hillary Anger Elfenbein, a professor of organisational behaviour at the University of Washington University in St.

Just think of an alarm clock, which is a perfectly predictable pitch playing in perfect time. Not so nice. This is why composers introduce the tonic note in the beginning of the song and then studiously avoid it until the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound.

Our auditory cortex rejoices. It has found the order it has been looking for. Meyer wanted to show how music is defined by its flirtation with—but not submission to—our expectations of order.

What Beethoven does instead is suggest variations of the pattern. He is its evasive shadow. If E major is the tonic, Beethoven will play incomplete versions of the E major chord, always careful to avoid its straight expression. He wants to preserve an element of uncertainty in his music, making our brains beg for the one chord he refuses to give us.

Beethoven saves that chord for the end. Eavesdropping is so fun precisely because it is so wrong. As a serial eavesdropper, I specialize in this — looking for the person standing alone at the bar and typing hectically into their phone. I love the titillating move of positioning your body perfectly to see the angry messages passing between them and, well, usually their mother or partner.

This is also the risk of eavesdropping. But then again, this is also the risk run by the person talking or typing in a public place. Listening to their parents fight or listening to their parents get it on? The act of eavesdropping may imply a sincere interest in the life of someone else, wanting to know how their sadness or anger will be resolved or what happened to make them so excited or happy.

Maybe some people listen with the secret knowledge that they can step in if needed. I personally find the most rewarding eavesdropping to be when I do make myself known. Eavesdropping has the potential to be rude but also this potential of an unexpected connection.

It can bring us together, whether we listen in and walk away knowing someone else a little bit more or we get caught and are forced to answer for ourselves.