A lot of these folks have headphones on, listening to their favourite music, which they are no doubt accompanying with their masterful drum riff.

I hate it.

The solution.

Everyone here has standard issue wristrests. Keyboard-width gel-filled doodaas to keep the wrists elevated when typing.

Build a drum synthesiser into these, so that different areas on the surface can be programmed to synthesise a different drum sound. The areas could me marked out on the surface. Equip these guys with a "line in" and a headphone socket so that you can plug your mp3 player or whatever into it, add your own drumsound to it and listen to the results on your headphone.

For those who play their tunes on their PC, I'm sure that suitable software jiggery pokery could be employed to overlay the drum track onto whatever they are playing there.

Finally, and here's the really important bit, use whatever materials are required so that no sound is physically generated when the wrist rest is struck.

Now, all the drummers on the floor can get their rocks off playing along to whoever, without driving the rest of us to mindless acts of violence.

It's a triple winner:

For the drummer- A much better sound

For the annoyed co-worker- Blissful silence

For their employer- A fortune saved in lost productivity and broken stationery. (I tend to deal with the current situation by hurling pens/pencils/staplers with extreme force).