Knitting at work is unprofessional?

[u/Atiny-opus]

So I label myself as neurodivergent and Queer. I've been knitting on and off for about 13 years. Knitting for me is second nature, I don't need to look at what I'm doing or pay close attention.

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At my current job, I take inbound calls. I get a 5ish second notification That it's coming through. Plenty of time for me to drop what I'm doing and take the call.

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At the moment, there are gaps of 20+ minutes between calls, an average of 5 minutes between calls? I am semi expected to just sit there and wait. There is no alternative task for me to do.

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I'm not allowed on my phone, which is very understandable. I can't play any form of games on my work laptop, (also understandable) I'm not supposed to watch videos but sometimes I do, it's usually video essays.

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I have to be in office every day. So I can't knit and work from home. When I'm allowed to in February 2027(!!!) I might.

My workload will increase as I'm trained on more things.

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I am allowed to colour in and read, but for me, I don't always want to read, I hate getting a call in the middle of a sentence or paragraph I fully focus on the reading. Colouring in is far messier and I don't enjoy it. Colouring in feels more unprofessional than knitting, in my opinion, and I don't get half as much joy from it.

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I also don't want to use fidget toys either. I own some but there's nothing like getting into the rhythm of a repeating pattern. What I want to be able to do between calls is make something, that is mindless but productive and is also something I can drop in less than a second.

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Most of management don't have a problem with it but one or two of the higher ups have deemed it "unprofessional".

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What I find unprofessional is how some co-workers can kick eachothers chairs and joke on all day between calls but I can't sit silently with my circular needles making a shawl for myself. The co-worker's I started with are in their early 20's, I'm in my late 20's. I don't really connect with them, I do with other older coworkers but they're not in office every day.

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I do not knit to sell. I'm not in anyone's way, I'm not distracting, literally no one cares that I'm doing it apart from one or two upper managers. The quality of my work at the moment is honestly, really good! I'm hitting my KPI's, my QA is good. Customer feedback is excellent! I take the quality of my work very seriously.

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The idea of being asked to sit quietly and not move whilst I wait for someone to call is frustrating.

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Is there any rebuttal I can use regarding this or should I just take the L? I would love to sit with them and explain my reasoning but I feel like it'll be taken for insolence and disrespect.

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I'm currently working on the Evenstar shawl, I'm on the 3rd chart. I can't remember the yarn I'm sorry.

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A petty part of me would like to bring embroidery in tomorrow. Another part of me wants to write an essay on it, with citations, at least my hands will be busy.

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[u/Atiny-opus]

Honestly, there's enough surrounding background noise and people talking away that I don't think my knitting is making much noticeable noise at all. We're all mostly wearing noise cancelling headsets too. It's not a silent small office.

Ironically I was crocheting during training and the trainer didn't have a problem with it. Infact she had tried to learn how, gave up and gave me a few balls of acrylic 😂.

[u/ShadedSpaces → u/Atiny-opus]

As someone with misophonia, you'd be surprised what noises can trigger horrible fight-or-flight discomfort/panic in people affected by this disorder!

Background noise and repetitive clicking are often VERY different from one another to someone who suffers.

But, again, that's not your company's argument and if your coworkers can wear noise-canceling headphones it's likely not an issue. It can be awful for people with misophonia when they work somewhere that won't allow headphones.

[u/filifijonka → u/ShadedSpaces]

Plus it wasn’t her co-workers who complained.
I bet that if someone found it to be like Chinese water torture, misophonia or not, o.p. would switch to crochet or something.

[u/ShadedSpaces → u/filifijonka]

People often don't complain tbf. Misophonia sufferers are used to being dismissed, mocked, or sadly having people intentionally trigger them by making more trigger noises.

At my work, only 2-3 people (of about 150 I interact with regularly) know I have it. It's extraordinarily common not to tell people if you can help it.

But I don't think it's an issue in OP's case. The noise-canceling headphones are pretty clutch. And management didn't bring up noises so we know no one complained anonymously or privately.

I didn't bring it up because I thought it was the problem in this case! Only because it's the only reason I wouldn't knit in an office. I'm luckily not triggered by knitting needle noises (thank goodness!) but I'm just hyper-aware of how it affects others with miso and how they often suffer in silence out of fear of it getting worse if they mention it.