Listen: Identitat by Das Beat
A little '80s throwback for you today because what is time if not a quickly revolving circle of aesthetics? The band Das Beat is a gift born of Berlin's lockdown, an aptly named buddy duo churning out German-New-Wave-Italo-Disco music that can seemingly be produced from a bedroom until the end of time. You could also dance to it in your bedroom, but that's now a choice rather than a resort. Take your pick.
The ~office of the future~ is still an office
I get that we’re going back to work, but I’m not certain I need to read about how somebody else’s office has changed to reflect our new world. Like, if you are Google and own a town, congratulations! You get to work outside on your lawn made of wifi. For everyone else, the big headline is that an office is mostly useful for seeing other people, so all the desks are organized in pods now. How different is this from when everyone discovered stadium seating? Set the people free.
Or drag out the chains, either way
If you’d rather be at home and therefore don’t much care for an office redesign, the CEO of WeWork would like you to know that you’re a slovenly asshole. He recently said as much at a Wall Street Journal festival: in his view, employees who are raring to get back are the most engaged and, it naturally follows, the most successful. I wonder, what incentive could he, a person charged with monetizing one zillion vacant office buildings, possibly have to turn office presence into a moral judgment? Something to think about.
(And don’t get me started on the Washingtonian lady.)
Don’t overdo it
Might be worth reminding some bosses that it’s not just Covid that kills when people show up to work unnecessarily. According to a WHO report that just came out, 745,000 people died in ONE YEAR from stroke and heart disease related to overwork. So rather than to debate the merits of a balloon wall (a legitimate experiment at Google for people who won’t move their bodies to a separate room for a meeting), why don’t we all knock off for the day?