The emergent norm at coworking spaces seems to be that you keep the volume down (just above a whisper) and don't talk to people if they have headphones in, as this signals that they're trying to concentrate.
Pair collaboration happens all the time in this sort of setting. These days I'm not the one pair programming, since my coworkers are a 5 hour drive away--it's other people. And they typically don't ask first.
But the reality is that if people are paying to work in an open office coworking space, they've chosen to be there and are at least somewhat extroverted. So those norms aren't likely to fit the needs of people who don't want to be in an open office.
The flipside of that coin is, I don't think introverts get to come into an open office space and determine norms for an office space they don't want to be in anyway. If a coworker communicated to me that they needed more quiet, I'd try to come up with a way to meet that need. But it's a bit aggressive to assume that I will meet your needs without you communicating them, and call me "rude and selfish" when I don't.
In the short-term, if you asked, obviously I'd just quiet down so you'd be able to get done what you needed to get done that day. But that's a short-term solution, and I'm not going to give up my productivity forever. The longer-term solution would be to help you lobby management to get you the privacy you need. Can we designate conference rooms as "quiet spaces" when not in use? Can we schedule all the meetings for one day a week so the conference rooms are not in use the rest of the time? Can we re-examine why we're not letting people work from home? Whatever compromise arises is going to come from us discussing what we both want and coming to an agreement. And if management really isn't amenable to anything that works for you, I'd probably leave the company--I don't particularly like working for authoritarians, even if the open office mandate doesn't harm me directly.
Pair collaboration happens all the time in this sort of setting. These days I'm not the one pair programming, since my coworkers are a 5 hour drive away--it's other people. And they typically don't ask first.
But the reality is that if people are paying to work in an open office coworking space, they've chosen to be there and are at least somewhat extroverted. So those norms aren't likely to fit the needs of people who don't want to be in an open office.
The flipside of that coin is, I don't think introverts get to come into an open office space and determine norms for an office space they don't want to be in anyway. If a coworker communicated to me that they needed more quiet, I'd try to come up with a way to meet that need. But it's a bit aggressive to assume that I will meet your needs without you communicating them, and call me "rude and selfish" when I don't.
In the short-term, if you asked, obviously I'd just quiet down so you'd be able to get done what you needed to get done that day. But that's a short-term solution, and I'm not going to give up my productivity forever. The longer-term solution would be to help you lobby management to get you the privacy you need. Can we designate conference rooms as "quiet spaces" when not in use? Can we schedule all the meetings for one day a week so the conference rooms are not in use the rest of the time? Can we re-examine why we're not letting people work from home? Whatever compromise arises is going to come from us discussing what we both want and coming to an agreement. And if management really isn't amenable to anything that works for you, I'd probably leave the company--I don't particularly like working for authoritarians, even if the open office mandate doesn't harm me directly.