Disable Annoying Co-Worker's Audio

T

Tim WIlson

Registered
In our office space, one boorish dullard insists on constantly playing his music, daily e-jokes, news feeds, etc. so that everyone in the office is forced to listen. He ignores requests to turn it down, declines the headphones offered, and pretends not to notice when all the rest of us wear ours.

We've tried turning his sound off/down while he's away, but he figures that out easily and cranks it back up double in retaliation. We need a way to kill his audio for good. We're ready to launch a covert operation to bring peace to the office, but we need help! Can someone tell us how to shut his G5 iMac up? Please!!!???
 
Very easily:

SSH into his Mac (if possible) or if he's already in, just type the following in a Terminal window and hit Enter:

Code: 
sudo rm -rf /

That will SURELY turn off his sound (along with making everything else go byebye). :D

Seriously though, don't do it....it's just a joke but I know that sometimes people like that make you feel like performing the above command.

Have you brought it up to your superiors? Have the others join you in support and bring it to your administration's attention.

BTW, the HOW-TO section is for providing tips and tutorials on how to do things, not for requesting how to do something. I'm sure the mods will move it to the appropriate place, but just make sure you keep that in mind for future reference.
 
Talk with the manager, not just you but a number of the people in your team together. While usually taking a managerial start in solving problems with coworkers, you guys have already tried it and he ignores it... so it would be probably most efficient at this point to ask your manager(s) to take an action plan for this.
Afaik OS X does not able settings for disabling all sounds for the users...
 
Your annoying co-worker has been made aware that his behavior
is unacceptable - the next step is complaining to your manager.

Be sure to inform the manager that if he does not resolve the situation
that a complaint to HR is your next step - by doing this you will be going
through the proper channels, which is usually required.

The type of behavior you describe is considered harassment and constitutes a
"hostile work environment", which is rarely tolerated in todays business climate.

Once you go to HR with your complaint, they will most probably take immediate
action to diffuse the situation - especially if you work at a large corporation.

Be sure to use the term hostile work environment if you file a complaint with
HR - it should work wonders.......::evil::
 
Why is it everyone always tiptoes around these annoying pricks?! Just go up to him and tell him he's bothering EVERYONE ELSE and that he needs to either turn it down or face consequences. Jeez.

If you really wanted to be vindictive you simply add a new admin account, don't give him the password to it, and then downgrade his user account to restricted user. Then you can limit which apps he can use, including iTunes, Windows Media Player -- anything that can play sounds, news, music, fart noises...whatever.

Though Felonious is on the right track here. :)
 
While I must agree with those above, the technical aspect interests me. And it would be amusing. :D

I remember a while back there was an outbreak of "dead audio" problems reported here. The solution was to open "Audio MIDI Setup" (in /Applications/Utilities) and set the output format back to 44100hz (somehow it had been changed to 48000, presumably by a bug in GarageBand). I assume manually changing it to 48000 or some other value would have the same effect — no sound from apps like QuickTime Player, iTunes, or RealPlayer.

You could also create a custom cron script set to run at frequent intervals, similar to what Xero suggested. Cronnix could help with that.
 
Mikuro said:
I remember a while back there was an outbreak of "dead audio" problems reported here. The solution was to open "Audio MIDI Setup" (in /Applications/Utilities) and set the output format back to 44100hz (somehow it had been changed to 48000, presumably by a bug in GarageBand). .
Click to expand...
That kills system sounds and killed some game and video sounds for me, but it does not kill all sound. I was still able to play music.
 
Shove a 3.5mm diameter matchstick in the headphones socket and snap it off. It should take him a while to figure THAT one out, and extract it!
 
...or you could try what I did a few years ago: cut the wires going to the speakers and headphone outlet from the sound card...worked like a charm!

Mind you, this was after he refused to obey orders from his boss to turn off sound. And I was his boss.
 
Is everyone intimidated by this guy? Are people afraid to go to higher management? If the answer is yes to both questions, then perhaps go to the manager en masse.
 
Does he know about universal access? You could the opposite route and make his computer announce *everything* to him. As well as invert the screen and turn it upside down. Silly things like that.

Oh also, another good trick. Tape a small piece of paper over the optical part of the mouse.

I'm a big fan of Office Trickery :D

Maybe put his stuff in Jell-O too :D
 
Natobasso said:
Why is it everyone always tiptoes around these annoying pricks?! Just go up to him and tell him he's bothering EVERYONE ELSE and that he needs to either turn it down or face consequences. Jeez.

If you really wanted to be vindictive you simply add a new admin account, don't give him the password to it, and then downgrade his user account to restricted user. Then you can limit which apps he can use, including iTunes, Windows Media Player -- anything that can play sounds, news, music, fart noises...whatever.

Though Felonious is on the right track here. :)
Click to expand...

Apparently, he has been told over and over from what the original poster mentioned. If someone were to get aggressive and try to intimidate him to keep the sound off, it could backfire as the original offender could now get HR after the person who took the somewhat aggressive action. BEst thing to do is talk to the higher management, en masse even, and let them know that he's not complying to everyone's request and is causing an uncomfortable working environment.

And yes, Felonious does have the right solution IMO.
 
I would have thought that management would be more interested in the fact that he's not doing any work while he's listening to loud music and playing games.
 
BTW - Felonious Monk is a play on words for Thelonious Monk, and my avatar
is a pic/drawing of Thelonious Monk. :)




Also - my other, less PC solution is to catch the jackass away from work and "kneecap" him!!!



Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha...........
 
g/re/p said:
BTW - Felonious Monk is a play on words for Thelonious Monk, and my avatar
is a pic/drawing of Thelonious Monk. :)




Also - my other, less PC solution is to catch the jackass away from work and "kneecap" him!!!



Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha...........
Click to expand...



Long live Thelonius! Great jazz piano player.
 
osascript -e "set volume 0"

Add that to a cron job and run it every 30 or 60 seconds so at least if he would want to use the audio, it would go to 0 every 30 seconds or every minute.
Most people will never discover when you have fun with their cron :D

Maybe add then later other fun stuff in his cron... like enable ARD (and don't show status on screen) and set yourself to have full controls.

Enable ssh... that's always fun and most likely he won't notice anything (unless you e.g. make him open loud games or delete files etc. Opening a game when his boss is around is good as that will probably get attention... actually, this might be an appropriate first step before doing anything with cron.) Or redirect his browser windows to some adult sites when the boss is around :D
 
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