Co-supervisor comes to the office to help her students, which distracts me My co-supervisor (2nd supervisor) comes to the office where I work to help her (main) Ph.D. students. The noise distracts my work. I find it unprecedented. Why not help her students in her own private office, instead of coming to the shared office space!?

I am not sure how to resolve this issue. Shall I message her, mention the issue to her students or to a superior academic, or change office?

Like it or not, there is a lot of hierarchy in academia and she has helped me in the past. I don't want to break relationships. In addition, I know I am not the only in the office who has noise issues. 

What would be the diplomatic way to have a quiet office space?

Edit &amp; Update:

1) Noise canceling earbudsor headphones are good and I have tried they do help, but to be honest if you want to concetrate to carry a task it's hard to maintain focus with loud volume.

2) I believe I have a common understanding with most of you guys. If there is a small chat in the office is fine but if it's a meeting more than 30 mins they should find a room. In my case, the co-supervisor helped her student for almost the whole day... And as I mentioned in the comment section from what I am aware she has an available office and there are plenty of meeting rooms in the Uni. If it's the computer thing they have laptops...

3) Thank you everyone for your support and suggestions, hope you are getting well with your offices. As mentioned from you, there cannot be a perfect office but at least have some common understanding I guess.
I'm not sure if I would use the word "unprecedented" here - I have definitely had my supervisor come into my office to explain stuff (or just chat), and I have also done the same with my own students. I can't imagine that we are total outliers here.

That said, unless you have a particularly bad relationship to your fellow students and your co-supervisor, is there anything wrong with asking them to discuss in a meeting room (or their office) if these discussion are lengthy and/or happen very frequently? I certainly would not mind taking our discussion elsewhere if other people are bothered.

To directly address your proposals:


  shall I message her


Why not just ask her friendly when they are discussing next time if they would mind moving to a meeting room?


  mention her students


You can, but talking to both involved parties at the same time feels a little less passive-aggressive to me.


  mention the issue to a superior academic or change office. 


That sounds like a massive overreaction, especially if you haven't even mentioned anything to her directly so far. Reporting your (co-)supervisor to some higher authority is a nuclear action of sorts, which you should definitely not do without exploring other options first. And even if you report this, I have a seriously hard time seeing anything coming out of it (aside from a pissed co-supervisor, that is).



The more fundamental issue here may be that your expectation of a "productive" workplace may be different from other students in the room. If you go over to Workplace.SE, there are plenty of questions of workers trying to convince their co-workers to hush up - but the fact of the matter remains that a dead-silent, only-strictly-required-talking workspace is simply not the preferred option for many people (I actually find it extremely uncomfortable if I sit in a shared office where nobody ever chats).

The only real practical solution to this problem is either to change office, or get / order noise cancellation headphones.