We were recently moved into a temporary space where there's a dozen or so people in a 40x40 room at any one point.

A lot of them have meetings with our business partners, which requires a lot of talking on the phone.

This noise isn't background noise, it isn't random white noise, it's noise that diverts your attention constantly because you may know what they are talking about. It's not something you can tune out.

I'm currently googling for noise blocking headphones.