Apparently that passive aggressiveness already exists in his work place thanks to his bosses and co-workers... but some how you all fault him and say he can't share that same love?
I was thinking more about other situations. I thought the salesman was isolated to an office because he has to talk on the phone, constantly, to customers and it was interrupting the developers. I've heard similar situations with startups and their CEOs. If I did that in my open space office, my coworkers would just get irritated and eventually I'll be talked about it by my manager.
In fact, in my current work environment, when we moved offices there was a "central" open area with a view half built cube walls. Originally our telephone support were going to sit there and the Dev team was going to get placed in an enclosed shared Dev "war room". Support squeaked and the timid dev team got stuck out in the open.
Supposedly since Support is on the phone, they would interrupt everyone (everyone else int he vicinity is sales and they each have private offices) since they talk aloud on the phone. Why's this bad? Because breaking deep thought vs. some noise in the background (which still also exists because of the leakage they have on the phone in a single enclosed room) is much much more unproductive. Worse, the Sales team often forgets to shut their doors so sound leaks out into the open area or between sales calls they congregate a few at a time and have loud conversations disrupting the dev team. Worst of all is if they are in their offices, quietly doing paperwork with their doors open then decide to yell to talk to another salesperson in another office.
I often get up and shut Sales office doors, and constantly have to hush people up. My timid dev team doesn't because, well they are timid and don't want to rock the boat and add friction to inter office relationships. (I can hear, I agree. I need to encourage my dev team to speak up more, perhaps I'm sheltering them too much.)
unfortunately in environments like the one the OP mentions, the squeaky wheel is usually the one that gets the grease. So, while attached to the trailer (company) you're best to squeak loudly while you look for a better vehicle to get onboard with.
