[throwaway5250]

Personally, I cannot be productive in a noisy environment (sans headphones), and I most definitely cannot be productive pair programming. (Or, good god, mob programming.) Yes, I've tried it.

I've been on one or two interviews where this requirement was brought up. For the common good, I just excuse myself.

It seems possible that some people can actually produce good results via pair programming, but I'm not aware of any examples myself.