A Legality member recently discovered how to deter her lawyers and coworkers from bothering her when she’s lunching at her desk.

Few law offices — even the biggies like mine — offer a quiet, comfortable place to eat a brown-bag lunch. Some of the big firms have kitchens with tables, but those areas are high traffic and noisy, and they’re usually decorated so depressingly that they have to keep the area free of sharp objects.

So what do you do when you aren’t eating out, but you’d rather not be surrounded by fading, institutional colors and art so dismal it makes you want to injure yourself?

You lunch at your desk. In process, though, unfortunately, you end up getting interrupted every minute or two by coworkers needing help or lawyers giving assignments. No one seems to realize you’re on break, nor even that your mouth is full.

Headphones might just solve the problem. They’ve worked well for at least one Legality member. A couple of weeks after starting to wear them at her desk while she ate, she happily reports a dramatic downturn in the number of interruptions. She’s using the time to catch up on her audio books, but speculates that she wouldn’t actually need to listen to anything. Just wearing the headphones would probably be enough to deter most inconsiderate lawyers.

Apparently, there’s just something about having one’s ears visibly plugged that puts people off. Good to know!