July 23, 2013 • 44 mins
Cubicle Doom: Can your office cubical kill you? Might an open-floor office plan save your life or drive you to madness? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie examine the science and psychology of our artificial work spaces.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
let's let's let's set the stage here. Okay, let's go
to your cubicle. What does your cubicle look like? My cubicle, Julie.
(00:28):
I think it's got probably all of the trappings of
your typical office worker. It's got some personal photos, stacks
of books and papers. But um, it does have a
big sign that says cloaca av Yeah. Um, of course
we can thank Cooper for that, and that that I
think really telegraphed to people like, hey, this is my territory. Yeah,
(00:51):
you have some weird bits of art thrown in there.
I have some fan art that's awesome. And then I
have a tiger bearing its jaws like a little figurine.
And again in I feel like the tiger and the
sign and all of these little things are ways of
saying this is my corner of the street, and uh,
you know this is this is my area and my dwelling.
(01:12):
And I should point out that our cubicles are really
more like what half of a hexagon. Really, it's like
it's the three walls, but there's they're a little more spacious. Yeah,
they're not too bad. They're gray, um, but but they
don't look like the office space um TV movie cubicle
type of thing. It's it's a little better than that.
I think, Oh, you're saying this a little bit jazz here.
(01:32):
I think it's jazz here. It's a little bit more angles. Yeah,
but it doesn't look it's not as nearly as soul crushing,
and it feels a little more open. We have a
fair amount of death space, um. And I have my
walls of my little area decorated with bits of art,
you know. So I have like some you know, I
think a Tibetan calendar up and some fantasy arts and
(01:53):
various bits and pieces that that sort of allow my
imagination to run wild. And most of it is is
like a agreeable to the workplace. You've forgotten the best
part of your cubicle the oh the sand Worm avenue,
that was the one that the bookshelf that's next to
the bookshelf, which is your fortress against the world. But
in addition to that is the painting of Biscuit cat Yes,
(02:16):
my sister Lucy, Lucy Lamb, she painted a picture of
my cat Biscuit, and that's up there with the one eye.
That's she doesn't really have one red eye. She has
one bad eye, but in the in the painting it's
it's red and kind of magical looking. So yeah, that's
going to shoot. That's definitely one of the prize pieces
that I have with me at work, you know, along
with some other personal momentos. All right, Uh, I'm thinking
(02:37):
you guys have guessed that today's topic is all about
our workspaces are cubicles, how we dwell in them, what
is dwelling in them, and perhaps even the future of
office space. Yes, and I would I would have to
advise anyone listening to this at their cubicle, at their
their their workspace. UM, prepared to to feel a little
(02:58):
weird about your work environment. Prepare to um perhaps run
out to the store and buy some uh some sort
of clean up wipes to scrub everything down, because we're
gonna get into not only your human co workers here,
but your microbial will coworkers and all the creepy Crawley's
that invisibly make up your workspace. Yeah, because let's let's uh,
(03:22):
let's be honest about it, that we have this whole
microbial kingdom that is surrounding us, not just on our
bodies and inside our bodies, but every single space that
you touch, every single thing from that elevator button up
to the floor that you work on. And indeed, we've
talked before about just all the microbes that our body
is carrying. I mean just our mouth again, five hundred
(03:44):
with thousand different types of bacteria. Uh, only a hundred
to two hundred live in a mouth at any given time,
and we all have these different um bacterial, floral environments
going on inside us. And then we bring these environments
and a host of other things into these workspaces. Yeah,
there is a study called office space Bacterial Abundance and
(04:04):
Diversity in three metropolitan areas. It's a study by Christie m.
Hewitt and Charles Gerba at All and they found that
most of the bacteria in an office originates from the
workers themselves, right, which is I mean, of course we
track everything in it's spread by coughing, sneezing, and shedding
of the skin. And by the way, there are dust
mites that are there waiting for these little skin flakes
(04:27):
to fall so they can feast upon them. Yeah. One
of the things that kept coming back to in researching
this podcast and the other one that we're recording today,
is that we really have this this false notion in
our heads that I mean, it's it's largely a false
notion that I feel like the more we learn about
and the more educated we each of us individually are,
(04:48):
the less we buy into this this false idea. But
it's the sense that there's the outside world with all
the things that live in it, all the things that
can kill us, all the things that are gross and yucky,
and then we're going to create these pristine indoor environments
that are holy and uh. And in this space, I
am the only thing that is living. I'm cut off
from all this annoying nature and it's just me. I
(05:10):
don't have to worry about mosquitoes swarming me. I don't
have to worry about other parasites climbing up. I don't
have to worry about things um swooping down off of
dog poop. I don't know why they need to swoop down.
Maybe the dogs are climbing trees now, But but still
that the example still holds true that we think of
our indoor environments as something special and something clean, and
(05:31):
in reality we just created another equally occupied artificial environment.
It's just that the things that get to live there
are the things that we bring in with us, so
they become this kind of zoo, this kind of mutated
we're not really mutated, but out of control zoo of
human flora. Well, it is a bit of a zoo,
and it is a bit of a mutation because when
(05:51):
you are controlling your environment like that, then you have
certain microbes that are going to subsist rather than other ones. Yes, yeah,
so yeah mutated. I did. I just didn't want to
make anybody think that these things were actually like a
genetic level, but in terms of an environmental mutation, I
think that would probably hold true. So of course this
would lead you to begin to wonder, like, where would
(06:12):
all of these germs in office building be hiding out?
Um researchers at Kimberly Clart Professional they used a molecular
detection method to gauge the germ count, and typical office
spaces in the areas that garnered the highest amount of
terms of them were dwelling in the brake room sink
faucet handles, which we all touch without thinking about it
(06:36):
and too much. No one will be surprised by this.
Forty eight percent of those germs were hanging out on
the microwave door handles, uh, keyboards, in refrigerator door handles,
and then of course you've got water fountains at about
the same rate in vending machine buttons, and so I
don't think any of that is a surprise because I
(06:57):
don't know about you guys out there, but if you're
office has a microwave and people use it a lot,
perhaps there's lots of evidence of that, and it's extremely
dirty and corroded with food, you know the inside is
going to be gross. But you did not have to
think about the handle so much. I don't know, because
I just think that's evidence of like it's getting used
every day. It's probably gonna use twenty times a day,
(07:20):
and then you know, right then, all the muck that's
stuck up in there is is a good indication that
this thing is getting a lot of play. Petrified tomato
sauce and all that. Well, you know, I would have
easily guessed keyboard because obviously we're touching our keyboards all
the time, and used I don't really eat snack mix anymore,
but I used to be like really into snack mix,
(07:42):
and U and I would have that horrifying time when
I realized like something had fallen through and I'm like, oh,
I need to get that kernel of nut out of
my keyboard. And then I turned it upside down and
it's like just a rain of filth that comes out
of it, and then I then I have to clean everything. Um.
But yeah, any space that individuals throughout your office are
coming into contact with on a daily basis, it's going
(08:03):
to accumulate. Even though it looks clean. I mean it
looks super smooth and polished because all those fingers are
rubbing it with their oil. Well, the thing I was
surprised about is that in your own personal space, that
your chair is actually ripe with bacteria your phone That
makes sense, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was reading that. Um,
if you make a telephone call, about one twenty seven
(08:26):
microbes per square inch are present, So that makes it
one of the grimeer things just in your desk environment.
Eavesdropping on your phone call. Well yeah maybe, and let's
say bacteria. But back to chairs. UM studies pointed out
that we're looking at that individuals do um fart in
the chipping in their chairs apparently. I mean, I think
(08:46):
it's a little rude, especially if you're you're seated next
to people. But um, I mean that's that's where the
business happens. So there's gonna be a certain amount of
bacteria or at least that way. UM and uh. One
of the studies that were looking at actually UM brought
gender into this, which flows naturally from the farting discussion
because we've talked before about possible gender biases regarding flatulens
(09:12):
or flatus if you will, UM that that men are
going to be more apt to just let it rip,
and then females are gonna be more conservative and perhaps
uh go somewhere else and do it in with some
sense of decorum. But according to researchers at San Diego
State University in the University of Arizona UM, the services
in men's offices had ten to more germs than their
(09:36):
female counterparts. So and the idea here is that maybe
just men are a little more gross than women. Well,
there was another idea that arting and also just clutter
and eating gross things over the keyboard and everything. Well,
it was a hygiene question where they're washing their hands
as much. But the other question was could it be
that on average, men have more surface area of skin
(09:56):
and therefore more micro That's that's the other side of this.
Maybe they're just eager they have more skin. And again,
most of the stuff is coming in on our skin,
and our skin is constantly, let's face it, falling apart
and shedding to tiny little pieces of dead skin and
just leaving these flakes everywhere. So more skin, more awful
stuff that you're bringing in and dropping all over the office.
(10:17):
I just wanted to throw that in there because I
feel like sometimes the guys that I were listening to
this podcast, they're like, man, so not only am I'm
more likely to get struck by lightning, but I have
more germs on me and possibly my uh y chromosome
is just gonna go EXTINCTOI. Yeah, and you're just a
mutation necessary to the species as opposed to the female,
(10:38):
which is the true um version of the Homo sapien,
the cleaner version, or perhaps not. Alright, uh so let's
take a quick break and when we get back, we're
gonna talk a little bit about stick building syndrome, and
then we are going to talk about the utopian vision
of the cubicle. All right, we're back and uh yeah,
(11:12):
we're gonna jump in a little more here. But first
I want to just run through a couple of quick factoids.
Some of these come from our our article about cube
death and how stuffworks dot com. You check that out.
Molly Edmonds, I believe wrote that one, yes, death by cubicle,
death by cubicle, but restaurants with surfaces that contain more
than seven hundred bacteria for square intra considered unsanitary. But
the typical office workers hands come in contact with ten
(11:34):
million bacteria a day. That also flows in nicely with
the fact that the average kitchen table, uh it tends
to be more clean than a desk because it's getting
wiped down all the time. We're just you're supposed to
after you eat their um, their crumbs, so you wipe
it down. But the same thing is happening with your desk.
People are eating at their desk. I eat at my
desk and I don't wipe it down each time, so
(11:55):
it's really horrible. From that same article, it turns out
that toilets are actually cleaner the toilets in the offices
because at least they're getting some level of cleaning. Well,
and if it's like ours, they're probably getting clean twice
a day, right, as opposed to your desk, which gets
cleaned maybe once a year. Another study found that teachers
or of course the grimiest profession because they have to
(12:15):
come into contact with with the human but but a
cubicalle dwelling accountants came in second because their desk racked
up six thousand and thirty bacteria or square inch. So
that's pretty pretty impressive. I saw on another list that
lawyers were the lowest on the list. Uh why is
that they just kicking back? They're not touching anything. I
(12:36):
don't know. This is the create your own lawyer joke
portion of the of the podcast. Have that guys right here?
Okay they inserted in that that space. Um, you know,
another thing to keep in mind too, about the all
the junke that we bring into the office place. Uh
the bottom of the feet And I think about this
sometimes it really makes me pine for like a shoeless
(12:57):
office place, kind of like Cooper's office on a Madman
Eastern style approach when they enter his his office, because
you know, obviously we're walking all over the place and
these things stepping on horrible, horrible substances and and uh
and bacteria and urine and bubble gum and food and
(13:17):
your name it. Yeah, chemicals, horrible pathogens. And it's also
worth pointing out that every time you step down, you
pressurize the air that's in your shoes, So you can
think of this as kind of like a shoe fart.
You stopped down, you scored a little warm air, carrying
a foot microbiology out. So just in the course of
walking around the office, we're tracking in crud that we've
(13:39):
been walking through, you know, on on the train, in
the street, up while walking the dog, and then when
we get in, we're shoe farting all this, uh, this
microbiology all over the place. So think about that, well,
I mean, this is what creates a nice, uh thick
ecosystem of microbes to work in. I also wanted to
(14:01):
mention that, in addition to to all these microbes, sometimes
you will see references to sick building syndrome or occupational asthma.
And this is experiencing asthmatic symptoms like t eyes or
coughing while at work. And it makes up about ten
percent of asthma cases in the US, and it is
estimated to be responsible for twenty four point five millions
(14:21):
sick days annually. Uh. This is according to Lisa Balcon,
who's running for the New York Times. So there's this
idea that when you create this microbialist in the office, uh,
that you're creating conditions that can certainly weaken your health.
Um cause asthmatic reactions. And there's also sick building syndrome,
(14:41):
in which a moldy or a poorly ventilated office causes headaches, fatigue,
and nausea, just to name a couple of symptoms. Yeah,
because you have this shut off environment, and to what
degree you're actually ventilating it, bringing in clean air or
are you just sort of cycling the whole sickness around. Well,
as you say, we've shut out the outdoors, so we
have limited our environment. We've really skewed it because at
(15:05):
least when you're outdoors and maybe you live in a
city that's fairly polluted, Um, you're still getting some movement
there in those that cloud of microbes is dissipating. Yeah,
and we're bringing in these uh, these toxic substances, often
from carpet, furniture, paint, um, other items such as the
You remember the war of the lavender um um air
(15:28):
freshener here at work. Yes, it seemed the last months,
but it was. It was a synthetic lavender air freshener
and it was permeating the office. Yeah, because lavender, natural
lavender is a beautiful smell. I love lavender, but this
is that artificial chemical lavendar that you can just you
feel killing your brain cells every every whiff you take.
(15:49):
And it was there. There was there was a war
just to keep it short between the air freshener and
those of us who didn't. And that is a good
example of some of the aggression that we see in
these more open office concepts. And we'll talk about that
in a moment, but yes, that's that's certainly something that
you are introducing into the environment. Or why was why
(16:12):
was the lavender airfrashner there? Because that particular office was
haunted by Funk It had not Well, what I think
is fascinating about all of this, because it's sort of
sprouts from this whole cubicle culture, is that the cubicle
was introduced as this sort of utopian idea of an office, uh,
(16:35):
space that someone could really like cling to and spread
out and and be as creative and productive as possible.
And when I'm talking about this utopian office vision, I'm
talking about Robert Props. He was a director of research
for Herman Miller, the furniture company, and he created something
called the Action office. So think about think about cubicles now, right,
(16:57):
just these squares essentially or our fancy like right angle ones,
and uh, think about this vision that he had that
he created, which was really more of like these half walls,
but that was there so that you could pin up
projects and then all these different and have a little
privacy when you needed privacy. Yeah, and then um a
lot of desk space with different components you could add
(17:19):
on to it, like bookshelves and so on and so forth,
so that the person who was working there could spread out, um,
could have all the things that they needed at hand. Yeah,
make it their own. You don't have to. You're not
ruled by that in and out box. And you would
have varying levels of workspace so that you can you
can sit down and you can and you can also
stand up and work. And of course that's growing more
(17:39):
and more popular these days with the individuals who want
to stand and work all day. Right. I mean it
was very forward thinking, but now this is what used
to exist before cubicles, and we're talking about those open
bullpens where there were really small dusks like think about
school desks that were just lined up one after that
there with no privacy. So in a sense, this this
(18:02):
utopian vision was a vast improvement. Sounds great, right, So
what happened? Where did it all go wrong? Well, with
the problem. The main problem here is that you're taking
an ideal and you're you're going to work that into
a business environment and into a business plan. You're going
to deal with space constraints, you're gonna deal with budget constraints,
and you're gonna end up with a product that looks
(18:24):
significantly different. Right, because we're talking about the late sixties here,
we're an increased workforce. We're talking about Uh, the real
estate costs just skyrocketing too. So they had to solve
that and they looked at this company, Herman Miller, a
lot of corporations, and said, can I cherry pick that
configuration to just choose what I want? Because if you do,
you you run into not not an excellent means of
(18:47):
creating an open workspace for your employee, but a way
of cramming more people into a given space and while
still providing them basically the workspace they needed to work.
And that's where this lovely idea of this action office
just was cherry picked to death and then eventually reconfigured
so that it just got smaller and smaller and smaller
(19:09):
until it became this corporate sardine can plan, these little
gray cells that you you slide yourself into. I was
looking at pictures of them because I sometimes forget what
they look like because I don't I've never worked in
a in a space that really had them. Um, because
I was in news newsrooms before this. I was working
for newspapers, and newspapers generally go with the open office.
(19:31):
So environment, because you're all working together, you're yelling at
each other, you're breaking into tears, um, you're collaborating on
this project on a deadline, and there's you know, there's
a lot of there's a certain amount of time wasting,
but a lot of just let's get this done. It's
so it's it's a cool environment, but it's not definitely
not a cubical environment. And then here, of course we
have this altered cubical environment we've described already. So uh
(19:55):
but but looking at these images, it really is soul
crushing some of these. I mean, it's just looks like
a cell and it has dominated the office landscape for
thirty years. That being said, now employers are going back
to this more um open bullpen configuration. So that's where
we begin to introduce a bunch of different problems, right
(20:16):
because here we're talking about the open office open office.
We've actually seen it parodied in recent TV shows like
Arrested Development the most recent season they have like this
basically a warehouse with this with like death spread out
across these spaces. Um parks and wreck had had that
business that John Ralphaeo and uh and disease open. That's
(20:40):
a huge space with all you know, like a desk
here and yeah, and it's become sort of a cliche
of startups. It has, and you know, various companies handle
things differently. There are some that will actually not have
any assigned seatings, so when you show up, you just
check out your laptop and then you go you go
to a desk check out a laptop for the day,
(21:02):
and then go find a place to sit. Yes, let's
let's make the workspace as much like a middle school
cafeteria as possible, because we all have fond memories of that.
Right now, I think the reason why employers are going
to this is one. It's really cheap. Right. You have
no walls, you have no partitions, you don't have to
worry about a ton of office furniture. Do the managers
still have closed off offices? I assume they do because
(21:23):
they have to have. Yeah, well not all, but there
are some companies where managers are out there with everybody
and there are no It just depends on So I
can feel better about about it if if the managers
rolling this out, Um, we're partaking of this new environment,
because a lot of times it feels like I have
this great idea for you guys. You're not gonna have
offices or cubicles. You're just gonna sort of exists in
(21:44):
a comfy space. If you need me, I'll be in
my office. Yeah, but offices are necessary because you have
to have some measure of privacy. Oh no, no, I'm
I'm a big believer in office because if you have.
If someone's gonna be fired, it needs to happen in office.
If someone's gonna be in you for a job, it
probably needs to have an inside of an office, So
off closed offices are necessary. Um And I think that
(22:07):
the privacy afforded by the right kind of cubicle is
is certainly necessary to my work environment. Like I can't
imagine if we were all setting around on bean bags here,
um and I was having to to try and work
on a laptop while Jonathan Stricklan shoots basketball and tells
me about his weekend, I would lose my mind. Uh.
I think though, that this is a trend that is
going to continue, because again it's a it comes down
(22:29):
to money and the The other part of this is
that so many companies are beginning to or have already
adopted pretty robust teleworking policy. Why waste the money and
the space on on on me having a designated office
space or of a designated cubicle if I'm only in
once a week, twice a week, three times a week,
(22:50):
which is where you have an unassigned desk space, and
it sort of makes sense because if you're only going
to be in a couple of days a week. Well,
then great, and it's sort of it is a fair
trade up. I would feel. It's like it's hard to
complain about about that if you were getting multiple telework
days per week and they said, oh, by the way,
you don't really get to have your own office anymore, right, right,
you really get to have your own designated space. Now,
(23:10):
this is probably something that a lot of listeners are experiencing. Um.
And I say that because, according to Susan Caine and
her New York Times article The Rise of the New
Group Think, virtually all American workers now spend time on teams.
That's a that's a new thing, right, teams were you know,
you're not just working individually anymore. And some seventy inhabit
these open plan offices, which she says, no one has
(23:32):
a room of their own. Well, you know, back to
what I was talking about newsrooms and you if you
worked their newsrooms, have you so so again? Like that's
the type of operation where an open workspace makes perfect
sense because it is a team effort to get this done.
There's a there's a certain amount of leave me alone
while I write my my paper, right righte? My article? Um,
(23:53):
and the old days you used to go cigarette me
and they would sick a cigarette in your mouth. That's
what the old timing we're telling me. Um, I'm sure
I can see it. And it's a very I like
the I like the environment of the newsroom because I
think that it's very intense and it gets it can
get very loud. I can sort of like when the
anxiety rises, so too does the volume of the voices.
(24:14):
But I was very good at just blocking all that out.
And because you know, when your heads down, your heads down. UM.
I had a co worker by the name I'm going
to go and outer Rachel Oswald because she's still a
fabulous journalist out there in the world. Um. But she
had this thing where she would be on deadline. She
would be finishing the front page story that I needed
to put in the paper that I was editing, and uh,
(24:36):
and she everyone has their own way of getting work done.
Her way was to put her headphones in and listen
to show tunes and and seeing out loud, seeing the
show tunes out loud that she was finishing the article.
And so you know, it's like, you know, it's it's
it's night already, want to go home, and it's not
the time to listen to your co workers sing show tunes.
But you know this is how you're going to get there.
(24:57):
You have to let Rachel singer show tunes and finish
the front page story. Um I wanted to point out
that if if you feel like your office space is shrinking,
if you're in a cubicle, or if you're an open
plan or even if you're in office with capital, it
turns out that the average square foot or square feet
per worker fell from two hundred to one hundred and
(25:21):
seventy six in This is in stark contrast to about
five hundred square feet that were allotted for each office
worker in the seventies, so you can see it's just
like slowly being whittled down. And there's this idea that
as a result of this lack of space and this
bullpen sort of environment, that there is an increased amount
(25:45):
of anxiety, aggression and poor health. And this is from
researcher Dr venesh Omen from the Queensland University of Technologies
Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. He said that nine
of the research, the outcome of working in an open
plan office was seen as negative. With these types of
offices causing stress and conflict and high blood pressure and
(26:07):
high staff turnover. So you can begin to see this,
like if you talk about the anxiety or aggression, you
can see this in an open office plan, because if
you're in the middle of that, you are very aware
of your coworkers conversations of perhaps the glade lavender air
freshener that they put up um or even like some
(26:29):
of the little habits, maybe the clipping of their nails
or toe nails at their desk. I really I could
hear that all day and look at that all day. Um,
So that begins to really sort of heighten what people
are feeling our distractions and annoying and you get that
that higher blood pressure and you get more stressed out.
(26:49):
So it sort of makes sense that in these environments
you're asking people to do very specific work, sometimes work
that requires a lot of attention, and yet here all
these different things going on all around you. Yeah, you
end up putting headphones in to cut off the noise
and try and concentrate more. But then with that comes
to the added uh fright of someone trying to get
your attention every now and then, and that just ups
(27:11):
the anxiety again. The startle response. Yeah, I mean, and
it comes out a lot of people enjoy. I mean,
I enjoy the privacy and space in which to do
my creative thing. And uh and really that to me,
that's more valuable at this stage of my career than
team work, because really, who's my team, Like, you're on
my team. Noel's on my team once a week for
(27:33):
a few hours, and then Tyler's on my team like
a few hours a week. Tyler's our video producer, and
nol is our podcast producer. And of course we're all
wearing matching T shirts right now. Um, and we are
a team. But you're right, I mean, what we all
do is is largely very independent. And Susan Caine and
the other article, The Rise of the New Group thinks
(27:53):
so that this is really important for people who are
creative but they're also introverts. They need to have that space.
And we've talked about this before. Um, they need to
feel like they have privacy and freedom from interruption, And
this is where it's really important that that that's another
thing that bugs me about the potential of a of
a manager with an office deciding things. Also the idea
of an extrovert who's a manager with an office deciding
(28:14):
how everyone else's space is gonna work, Like, Hey, guys,
let's just do this. That's a big old work party, NonStop,
realizing that most of us do not want to attend,
or some of us do not want to attend the
work party, and the idea of the work party alone
is enough to give us the shivers. Well, I think
that there should be opportunity for informal collaborations, right that.
That's I think why they say, hey, come in, make
(28:36):
sure you're in the office X amount of time, or
we're gonna have an actual meeting about this. But um,
it turns out that if you have those sort of
informal like hey, how's it going, you know, uh, and
you share some ideas that you then take that inspiration
from that conversation and you go away and you do
the actual work. Right, So if you just sat around
all day collaborating, nothing would get done. Yeah, it kind
(28:58):
of comes back to what we're talking about the caffeine
an episode, the idea that when you do you take
your coffee, you caffeinate, Uh, then you're able to focus
on a top on a given topic. But then you're
not doing the free brain association activity that is the
hallmark of creative endeavor. So you need a balance between
the two. So we need to share spaces with our coworkers.
We need to be able to collaborate. Uh. We need
(29:20):
to shoot basketball, uh hoops with Jonathan strict but John,
I don't know why Jonathan shooting basketball in this to
my knowledge, he doesn't shoot basketball. But at any rate,
you need to uh shoot some hoops with Jonathan every
now and then. But then you also need to be
able to to walk away from Jonathan and find a
place of quiet. It's true, and the quiet is the
big deal, right, I mean, this is the chief complaint
(29:41):
that most people have in any kind of office setting
is that it's just not quiet enough. There's too much
going on. I can hear someone on the phone talking
and I can't hear the other person on the other
line or you know who they're talking to you, and
that's maddening. We've discussed that in episodes. Hearing half of
phone call is one of the most disturbing things possible,
because your brain wants to loop everything up, even if
(30:02):
that's not your primary activity, far from it. From the day,
your brain wants to make sense of it. Yeah, it's
distracted because it's trying to make sense of that conversation
and and um fill in those loops. But I did
want to point out that there was a survey of
sixty five thousand people over a decade. This was in
North America, Europe, Africa, and Australia, Australia, Australia, and they
(30:24):
did they said, this is the thing people. You know,
half of these people say that they need privacy, and
they need speech privacy. So they need to be able
to make a phone call or have a conversation without
everybody hearing it, and they also need not to hear
everybody else. So I thought it was interesting that a
software company called Autodesk, which was setting up a new office,
they wanted to test out something called a pink noise system. Okay. Now,
(30:48):
this is described as a soft whoosh that's admitted over
loud speakers and it sounds like a ventilation system, but
it is specially formulated to match the frequencies and human voices. Okay,
So unbeknown it's sort of an organic white noise. Thus
the pink noise. It's like a fleshy white noise. I
(31:08):
have to say the pink noise sounds kind of nice, right, yeah,
a little dirty, but nice, like you know, like a
ventilation lullaby. Really yeah, it makes me think of the
ventilation system is alive and fleshy though, Like we're in
a Cronenberg office and do you think of pink good
dripping down from it? I have to say, But unbeknownst
to the employees in that office, they had no idea
this was running, and it was run for three months.
(31:30):
They shut it off and boom, they immediately got complaints
and everyone lost their minds. Well, they couldn't pinpoint it.
They didn't know. They just kept saying like I can
hear so and so and there's you know, like it
was like that day that the power was knocked out
and it turned out the lights were on, but they
had to shut off all of the really high end
stuff like the ventilation system, and it suddenly felt wrong. Yeah,
(31:54):
we were like, what's going on in here? Well, the
same thing happens I think around like six o'clock in
the building and UM used to when I would stay
to six, like that's when I knew it was time
to go, Like, feels wrong in here, something weird? You
have those cues, right. Uh. So it was interesting because
apparently that that system was helping to muffle conversations, so
(32:16):
all of a sudden people could hear conversations from sixty
feet away as opposed to me. You know, it sort
of deadening that sound for them. Well, I think we
ought to introduce we can call it green noise, and
it'll be um, just a constant like wishiness, but with
kind of ghostly voices too, so that you're you're constantly
(32:37):
a little bit on edge, Robert like that. Yeah, so like, yeah,
it's kind of like an ectoplasm based pink noise, I think.
So it's sort of like the mathieson um novel. It's
like come out no um oh I am legend, yes,
all right, Yeah, that's what we all need is is
this promise of zombies behind the our office door. So
(32:59):
it's hard to think about this open office concept in
lack of privacy is running parallel with this other issue
that we have in our lives of not having any
privacy anywhere because of the Internet or the amount of
information that we're giving out um. And it's it's sort
of interesting, do you know, to to look at it
that way and wonder if this is just us really
(33:22):
fulfilling and adaption to what our current circumstances are. Is
this really a big deal? Mm? Yeah, I don't know.
Like it does remind me one of the criticisms of
the open office spaces that people going outside to take
personal phone calls instead of having them at their desks,
which doesn't sound like really that bad of a thing,
but the idea is that supposedly you're losing some time
(33:42):
and doing that. Um, but it's is it. It's not
like that it would be any less private to have
that conversation in the office space. You're just seeing people.
Like so much of it is just our perceived privacy.
We need to have this agreed upon fiction of how
private our workspace is. Like, for instance, working in a
crowded coffee shop to me is great. I can I
(34:05):
can really put in my headphones and and just barrel
through a project. But I'm certainly not private. If anything,
I'm visible by more people, but I don't really I
don't tune not to know any of them, so it's
almost like they're not there. So but it's all about
just me creating this uh, this environment, uh, this this
world view in which I have privacy. Well, that's right,
because all those people around you are not saddled with uh,
(34:28):
you know, biography that you know. So if you're in
a coffee shop and someone next to you is yapping
about something, then you're probably not You can probably just say, Okay,
that person is yapping. I can crowd them out of
my mind. But if you put a name to them
and some instances are collaborations that you've had with them,
perhaps then you start to feel like, oh, could you
please quit talking. So it's interesting to see that we
(34:53):
do have to create this illusion for ourselves, and I
think that maybe that's that's ultimately what the answer is.
You have to have an environment that allows people to
have privacy, that allows people to work together, and throughout
all of it create an illusion that they can accept
that they have the privacy to work right. And part
of that allusion too, is making these people feel like
(35:14):
they have choices, like, for instance, we're gonna decorate our
our cubicles and feel like it is ours, it's my
corner of the street, right, yes, which makes you feel
like you have a little bit more control over your environment. Yeah,
the freedom to put up a poster of a barbarian
lady cutting off a monster's head like that is important.
I fight for that absolutely, not only in this workplace,
(35:35):
but the next in anyone else's workplace. I will write
an email on your behalf to your boss about your
right to put up that barbarian poster. There you go
take them up on it, guys. All right, Well, on
that note, let's call over the robot and do a
little listener mail that all of this comes to us
from Facebook. And uh, this first one comes from Brad,
(35:56):
dear Robert and Julie. I just listened to a writer's
letter about naming holidays for the seven Deadly sins. He
could not come up with a holiday that matched envy.
So I thought about it, and I came up with
your birthday. It is the only holiday typically celebrated by
one person at a time. On another note, I'm a
late time subscriber to your podcast and have been trying
to catch up furiously. I'm a truck driver and listen
(36:17):
to about tin podcasts today, uh and possibly a day um,
and I'll get to that in a second. Um. I
should be caught up in no time. Sorry for the
pronunciation and writing, I am using voice text to write
this message keep up the great work. I like that,
and I like how he's you know, trucking along and
doing the safe thing here and using uh. I mean,
I guess I knew that was possible because of all
(36:39):
the serious stuff, But I think this is the first
time that we've had a listener right in and actually
told us that they were using a voice to tech
software to write to us. It's kind of crazy and
futuristic in its own way. I would be interested to
know since he has sort of a mobile office of one,
what sort of things in his office environment as a
truck or you know, um work for him or don't
(37:03):
work for him, And does he ever get into big
arguments with himself? Yeah, the mobile workplaces, that's a whole
another issue in and of itself because you get into
you certainly get into issues of economics there because it's
one there. And this is exploring in Molly Edmands article
that we decided earlier about pubical death. Um. You know,
there are a number of concerns about the posture and
pete keyboard position and eyes train and all of this
(37:25):
are related to a physical, non moving office. But then
in a vehicle like if you have a keyboard to
the side, um uh, such as in a you know,
any kind of like a survey vehicle or a police car, etcetera.
They're a whole host of new orgonomic problems that present themselves,
such as constantly twisting over to use a keyboard at
a weird angle. Um. So anyway, that's a whole another issue.
(37:46):
But yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to hear about the
passing of time too in that context, as we just
did an episode about time. So if you're in that
environment and you're on the road, how does that pass
for you? Um? What sort of things make it pass
quicker or slower? This one comes to us from Amanda
in uh Saskatchewan ox Bow, um, Saskatchewan to be a specific.
(38:06):
She writes and says, I thought i'd write in about
your recent coffee episode. I am one of the super
sensitive types. The coffee is reserved for very important times
only I if I have to stay up all late,
all night and most of the next day sort of
reasons only. Hopefully my abstaining is keeping me extra creative
three exclamation points. Uh So yeah, it sounds it sounds
like uh, I've certainly talked to people like that who
(38:29):
are just ultra sensitive to it and only use it
if they really need to stay up like crazy. But yeah, uh,
then we also heard from Bonnie listener. Bonnie writes in
and says, I love coffee, So I really enjoyed the
recent episode on coffee. My dad started giving me the
extra little bit of his coffee and uh, they wouldn't
fit in his work thermis when I was just a
(38:50):
little kid, and then by junior high he was making
enough for me to have a real cup of coffee
before school. I never get the caffeine jitters, nor do
I ever feel a jolt from drinking a cup of Joe.
Guess I have built up quite a tolerance over the years.
What I really wanted to ask, though, is which of
your co workers do you think would have a jar
of urine in their office? In their office? And are
you and are they fellow podcasters that we the public
(39:13):
might be familiar with, And if we guessed which ones
they were, would you tell us if we were right?
Do you want to feel that one? Um? Now, I
will say, the coworker that has the most um liquid
receptacles on their desk at any given time has to
be Holly of stuffy miss in history class. I just
noticed there will be numerous cups and and cans. I
(39:37):
believe they're empty, but they could conceivably be filled with urine.
I'm not saying she's doing it, but I'm saying the
ultimate like lady like person in this building, you know that, right?
Like she's not. I mean, if you went, if I
tell her what you just said, we actually I will,
and we'll stand there and let's register the horror on
her face. So I would not. I would not say
(39:59):
that that Holly would be the YearIn. No, No, no,
she wouldn't. But I have someone in mind. Are they
a podcaster? H But I think I feel like I
kind of need to ask. I feel like I kind
of need to ask that person if this arrangement is
okay before agreeing to it. I'm very intrigued by this.
(40:19):
I would love for you guys to guess who I'm thinking.
But you know that person has to be a willing
participant in this's okay? Alright, Bonnie, well you heard that.
Tune in later for more details. All right. We also
heard from Meg. Meg writes and it says I was
just listening to the coffee podcast popular with a lot
of people and wanted to chime in since you wanted
to hear from creative coffee drinkers. Um. As I've written before,
(40:42):
I'm a professional miniatures painter and have been for the
last five years. I'm an avid coffee drinker, especially before painting.
I find it really increases me my creativity and productivity.
I also have experiences with hand jitters like Robert mentioned,
uh he gets before he paints minis. Painting is a
very zen activity and helps keep calm and centered throughout
my day. One question I have for you guys is
(41:03):
how does caffeine affect people with a d h D.
I am a d D and I know others who
are too, and we all swear by drinking caffeine eated
beverages on days we forget our Riddlin or other stimulant
medications at home. We have found it acts like Riddlin
in a pinch, and caffeine actually helps our brains to focus,
says Robert. Anytime you come to Seattle, let me know
and maybe we can get a paint jam in sometime.
(41:26):
All right, that's uh okay, I think I'm gonna have
put that in the file for future h D episode
because we've talked about this and we've had another request
for it in terms of creativity a d D and
a d h D and how it may or may
not affect creativity, so we'll have to explore that. And
just as far as miniatures go, I was really intrigued
that that Meg, even though she has experienced apparently some
(41:48):
of the hand jitters before, that she makes a regular
point of drinking coffee before she she paints. But maybe
she has naturally steady your hands than I do, so
she doesn't suffer as much. Well, And then there is
that level of sensitivity to Indeed, everybody has kind of
a different cocktail in their body, reacting differently to it.
And finally we heard from Matthew. Matthew retz Inus is high.
Robert and Juley love listening to your podcasts, and I
(42:10):
often find myself imagining your recording set up for some reason.
I picture a dark room, devoid of any distracting pictures, etcetera,
simply two stools, a table, and two mics. Any chance
you would post a picture of your actual recording set up, well,
I would say that we don't really have to, because
if you watch the stuff you should know TV show.
The setup they have in that show is fake but
(42:34):
looks sort of like a clean TV version of what
we actually have. Well, you're talking about the red um
batting that serves as installation, right or two actually deaden
the sound vibrations so that you don't hear the traffic
too much there on Peachtree Street. But we also have
pictures of bats um and I would think we've mentioned
(42:55):
this before. Picasso in his underpants, Yes, Tesla over there,
and a book on Santa Fe design and the wit
and wisdom of fishing. Yes, if this gives people a
better idea of this sort of clutter that we have
around us. We also have a terrarium with a homunculous
in it. We have we have a necronomicon in a
vacuum sealed chamber, and UH a collection of various potions,
(43:16):
some of which have been tested on our interns, some
of which have not. I will not confirm or deny.
All Right, Well, if you have something you would like
to share with us, um and particularly about today's episode,
about the workspace. What's your workspace like and how does
it affect your creativity? About your your ability to to
jam and brainstorm, arm with your your coworkers. Do you
(43:37):
have a mobile uh working environment? If so, how do
you how do you remain creative in that? How do
you remain comfortable in that? UM? Let us know all
this stuff is game. You can find us in a
number of places. Stuff to Blew Your Mind dot com
is the mothership. That's where all our blog posts go,
the videos, the audio, you name it, pictures of us.
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(43:57):
trying to figure that out, well that's where you need
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Oh and then YouTube mind stuff show. That's right, And
you can also send us an email at blow of
the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this
(44:22):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
dot Com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
let's let's let's set the stage here. Okay, let's go
to your cubicle. What does your cubicle look like? My cubicle, Julie.
(00:28):
I think it's got probably all of the trappings of
your typical office worker. It's got some personal photos, stacks
of books and papers. But um, it does have a
big sign that says cloaca av Yeah. Um, of course
we can thank Cooper for that, and that that I
think really telegraphed to people like, hey, this is my territory. Yeah,
(00:51):
you have some weird bits of art thrown in there.
I have some fan art that's awesome. And then I
have a tiger bearing its jaws like a little figurine.
And again in I feel like the tiger and the
sign and all of these little things are ways of
saying this is my corner of the street, and uh,
you know this is this is my area and my dwelling.
(01:12):
And I should point out that our cubicles are really
more like what half of a hexagon. Really, it's like
it's the three walls, but there's they're a little more spacious. Yeah,
they're not too bad. They're gray, um, but but they
don't look like the office space um TV movie cubicle
type of thing. It's it's a little better than that.
I think, Oh, you're saying this a little bit jazz here.
(01:32):
I think it's jazz here. It's a little bit more angles. Yeah,
but it doesn't look it's not as nearly as soul crushing,
and it feels a little more open. We have a
fair amount of death space, um. And I have my
walls of my little area decorated with bits of art,
you know. So I have like some you know, I
think a Tibetan calendar up and some fantasy arts and
(01:53):
various bits and pieces that that sort of allow my
imagination to run wild. And most of it is is
like a agreeable to the workplace. You've forgotten the best
part of your cubicle the oh the sand Worm avenue,
that was the one that the bookshelf that's next to
the bookshelf, which is your fortress against the world. But
in addition to that is the painting of Biscuit cat Yes,
(02:16):
my sister Lucy, Lucy Lamb, she painted a picture of
my cat Biscuit, and that's up there with the one eye.
That's she doesn't really have one red eye. She has
one bad eye, but in the in the painting it's
it's red and kind of magical looking. So yeah, that's
going to shoot. That's definitely one of the prize pieces
that I have with me at work, you know, along
with some other personal momentos. All right, Uh, I'm thinking
(02:37):
you guys have guessed that today's topic is all about
our workspaces are cubicles, how we dwell in them, what
is dwelling in them, and perhaps even the future of
office space. Yes, and I would I would have to
advise anyone listening to this at their cubicle, at their
their their workspace. UM, prepared to to feel a little
(02:58):
weird about your work environment. Prepare to um perhaps run
out to the store and buy some uh some sort
of clean up wipes to scrub everything down, because we're
gonna get into not only your human co workers here,
but your microbial will coworkers and all the creepy Crawley's
that invisibly make up your workspace. Yeah, because let's let's uh,
(03:22):
let's be honest about it, that we have this whole
microbial kingdom that is surrounding us, not just on our
bodies and inside our bodies, but every single space that
you touch, every single thing from that elevator button up
to the floor that you work on. And indeed, we've
talked before about just all the microbes that our body
is carrying. I mean just our mouth again, five hundred
(03:44):
with thousand different types of bacteria. Uh, only a hundred
to two hundred live in a mouth at any given time,
and we all have these different um bacterial, floral environments
going on inside us. And then we bring these environments
and a host of other things into these workspaces. Yeah,
there is a study called office space Bacterial Abundance and
(04:04):
Diversity in three metropolitan areas. It's a study by Christie m.
Hewitt and Charles Gerba at All and they found that
most of the bacteria in an office originates from the
workers themselves, right, which is I mean, of course we
track everything in it's spread by coughing, sneezing, and shedding
of the skin. And by the way, there are dust
mites that are there waiting for these little skin flakes
(04:27):
to fall so they can feast upon them. Yeah. One
of the things that kept coming back to in researching
this podcast and the other one that we're recording today,
is that we really have this this false notion in
our heads that I mean, it's it's largely a false
notion that I feel like the more we learn about
and the more educated we each of us individually are,
(04:48):
the less we buy into this this false idea. But
it's the sense that there's the outside world with all
the things that live in it, all the things that
can kill us, all the things that are gross and yucky,
and then we're going to create these pristine indoor environments
that are holy and uh. And in this space, I
am the only thing that is living. I'm cut off
from all this annoying nature and it's just me. I
(05:10):
don't have to worry about mosquitoes swarming me. I don't
have to worry about other parasites climbing up. I don't
have to worry about things um swooping down off of
dog poop. I don't know why they need to swoop down.
Maybe the dogs are climbing trees now, But but still
that the example still holds true that we think of
our indoor environments as something special and something clean, and
(05:31):
in reality we just created another equally occupied artificial environment.
It's just that the things that get to live there
are the things that we bring in with us, so
they become this kind of zoo, this kind of mutated
we're not really mutated, but out of control zoo of
human flora. Well, it is a bit of a zoo,
and it is a bit of a mutation because when
(05:51):
you are controlling your environment like that, then you have
certain microbes that are going to subsist rather than other ones. Yes, yeah,
so yeah mutated. I did. I just didn't want to
make anybody think that these things were actually like a
genetic level, but in terms of an environmental mutation, I
think that would probably hold true. So of course this
would lead you to begin to wonder, like, where would
(06:12):
all of these germs in office building be hiding out?
Um researchers at Kimberly Clart Professional they used a molecular
detection method to gauge the germ count, and typical office
spaces in the areas that garnered the highest amount of
terms of them were dwelling in the brake room sink
faucet handles, which we all touch without thinking about it
(06:36):
and too much. No one will be surprised by this.
Forty eight percent of those germs were hanging out on
the microwave door handles, uh, keyboards, in refrigerator door handles,
and then of course you've got water fountains at about
the same rate in vending machine buttons, and so I
don't think any of that is a surprise because I
(06:57):
don't know about you guys out there, but if you're
office has a microwave and people use it a lot,
perhaps there's lots of evidence of that, and it's extremely
dirty and corroded with food, you know the inside is
going to be gross. But you did not have to
think about the handle so much. I don't know, because
I just think that's evidence of like it's getting used
every day. It's probably gonna use twenty times a day,
(07:20):
and then you know, right then, all the muck that's
stuck up in there is is a good indication that
this thing is getting a lot of play. Petrified tomato
sauce and all that. Well, you know, I would have
easily guessed keyboard because obviously we're touching our keyboards all
the time, and used I don't really eat snack mix anymore,
but I used to be like really into snack mix,
(07:42):
and U and I would have that horrifying time when
I realized like something had fallen through and I'm like, oh,
I need to get that kernel of nut out of
my keyboard. And then I turned it upside down and
it's like just a rain of filth that comes out
of it, and then I then I have to clean everything. Um.
But yeah, any space that individuals throughout your office are
coming into contact with on a daily basis, it's going
(08:03):
to accumulate. Even though it looks clean. I mean it
looks super smooth and polished because all those fingers are
rubbing it with their oil. Well, the thing I was
surprised about is that in your own personal space, that
your chair is actually ripe with bacteria your phone That
makes sense, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was reading that. Um,
if you make a telephone call, about one twenty seven
(08:26):
microbes per square inch are present, So that makes it
one of the grimeer things just in your desk environment.
Eavesdropping on your phone call. Well yeah maybe, and let's
say bacteria. But back to chairs. UM studies pointed out
that we're looking at that individuals do um fart in
the chipping in their chairs apparently. I mean, I think
(08:46):
it's a little rude, especially if you're you're seated next
to people. But um, I mean that's that's where the
business happens. So there's gonna be a certain amount of
bacteria or at least that way. UM and uh. One
of the studies that were looking at actually UM brought
gender into this, which flows naturally from the farting discussion
because we've talked before about possible gender biases regarding flatulens
(09:12):
or flatus if you will, UM that that men are
going to be more apt to just let it rip,
and then females are gonna be more conservative and perhaps
uh go somewhere else and do it in with some
sense of decorum. But according to researchers at San Diego
State University in the University of Arizona UM, the services
in men's offices had ten to more germs than their
(09:36):
female counterparts. So and the idea here is that maybe
just men are a little more gross than women. Well,
there was another idea that arting and also just clutter
and eating gross things over the keyboard and everything. Well,
it was a hygiene question where they're washing their hands
as much. But the other question was could it be
that on average, men have more surface area of skin
(09:56):
and therefore more micro That's that's the other side of this.
Maybe they're just eager they have more skin. And again,
most of the stuff is coming in on our skin,
and our skin is constantly, let's face it, falling apart
and shedding to tiny little pieces of dead skin and
just leaving these flakes everywhere. So more skin, more awful
stuff that you're bringing in and dropping all over the office.
(10:17):
I just wanted to throw that in there because I
feel like sometimes the guys that I were listening to
this podcast, they're like, man, so not only am I'm
more likely to get struck by lightning, but I have
more germs on me and possibly my uh y chromosome
is just gonna go EXTINCTOI. Yeah, and you're just a
mutation necessary to the species as opposed to the female,
(10:38):
which is the true um version of the Homo sapien,
the cleaner version, or perhaps not. Alright, uh so let's
take a quick break and when we get back, we're
gonna talk a little bit about stick building syndrome, and
then we are going to talk about the utopian vision
of the cubicle. All right, we're back and uh yeah,
(11:12):
we're gonna jump in a little more here. But first
I want to just run through a couple of quick factoids.
Some of these come from our our article about cube
death and how stuffworks dot com. You check that out.
Molly Edmonds, I believe wrote that one, yes, death by cubicle,
death by cubicle, but restaurants with surfaces that contain more
than seven hundred bacteria for square intra considered unsanitary. But
the typical office workers hands come in contact with ten
(11:34):
million bacteria a day. That also flows in nicely with
the fact that the average kitchen table, uh it tends
to be more clean than a desk because it's getting
wiped down all the time. We're just you're supposed to
after you eat their um, their crumbs, so you wipe
it down. But the same thing is happening with your desk.
People are eating at their desk. I eat at my
desk and I don't wipe it down each time, so
(11:55):
it's really horrible. From that same article, it turns out
that toilets are actually cleaner the toilets in the offices
because at least they're getting some level of cleaning. Well,
and if it's like ours, they're probably getting clean twice
a day, right, as opposed to your desk, which gets
cleaned maybe once a year. Another study found that teachers
or of course the grimiest profession because they have to
(12:15):
come into contact with with the human but but a
cubicalle dwelling accountants came in second because their desk racked
up six thousand and thirty bacteria or square inch. So
that's pretty pretty impressive. I saw on another list that
lawyers were the lowest on the list. Uh why is
that they just kicking back? They're not touching anything. I
(12:36):
don't know. This is the create your own lawyer joke
portion of the of the podcast. Have that guys right here?
Okay they inserted in that that space. Um, you know,
another thing to keep in mind too, about the all
the junke that we bring into the office place. Uh
the bottom of the feet And I think about this
sometimes it really makes me pine for like a shoeless
(12:57):
office place, kind of like Cooper's office on a Madman
Eastern style approach when they enter his his office, because
you know, obviously we're walking all over the place and
these things stepping on horrible, horrible substances and and uh
and bacteria and urine and bubble gum and food and
(13:17):
your name it. Yeah, chemicals, horrible pathogens. And it's also
worth pointing out that every time you step down, you
pressurize the air that's in your shoes, So you can
think of this as kind of like a shoe fart.
You stopped down, you scored a little warm air, carrying
a foot microbiology out. So just in the course of
walking around the office, we're tracking in crud that we've
(13:39):
been walking through, you know, on on the train, in
the street, up while walking the dog, and then when
we get in, we're shoe farting all this, uh, this
microbiology all over the place. So think about that, well,
I mean, this is what creates a nice, uh thick
ecosystem of microbes to work in. I also wanted to
(14:01):
mention that, in addition to to all these microbes, sometimes
you will see references to sick building syndrome or occupational asthma.
And this is experiencing asthmatic symptoms like t eyes or
coughing while at work. And it makes up about ten
percent of asthma cases in the US, and it is
estimated to be responsible for twenty four point five millions
(14:21):
sick days annually. Uh. This is according to Lisa Balcon,
who's running for the New York Times. So there's this
idea that when you create this microbialist in the office, uh,
that you're creating conditions that can certainly weaken your health.
Um cause asthmatic reactions. And there's also sick building syndrome,
(14:41):
in which a moldy or a poorly ventilated office causes headaches, fatigue,
and nausea, just to name a couple of symptoms. Yeah,
because you have this shut off environment, and to what
degree you're actually ventilating it, bringing in clean air or
are you just sort of cycling the whole sickness around. Well,
as you say, we've shut out the outdoors, so we
have limited our environment. We've really skewed it because at
(15:05):
least when you're outdoors and maybe you live in a
city that's fairly polluted, Um, you're still getting some movement
there in those that cloud of microbes is dissipating. Yeah,
and we're bringing in these uh, these toxic substances, often
from carpet, furniture, paint, um, other items such as the
You remember the war of the lavender um um air
(15:28):
freshener here at work. Yes, it seemed the last months,
but it was. It was a synthetic lavender air freshener
and it was permeating the office. Yeah, because lavender, natural
lavender is a beautiful smell. I love lavender, but this
is that artificial chemical lavendar that you can just you
feel killing your brain cells every every whiff you take.
(15:49):
And it was there. There was there was a war
just to keep it short between the air freshener and
those of us who didn't. And that is a good
example of some of the aggression that we see in
these more open office concepts. And we'll talk about that
in a moment, but yes, that's that's certainly something that
you are introducing into the environment. Or why was why
(16:12):
was the lavender airfrashner there? Because that particular office was
haunted by Funk It had not Well, what I think
is fascinating about all of this, because it's sort of
sprouts from this whole cubicle culture, is that the cubicle
was introduced as this sort of utopian idea of an office, uh,
(16:35):
space that someone could really like cling to and spread
out and and be as creative and productive as possible.
And when I'm talking about this utopian office vision, I'm
talking about Robert Props. He was a director of research
for Herman Miller, the furniture company, and he created something
called the Action office. So think about think about cubicles now, right,
(16:57):
just these squares essentially or our fancy like right angle ones,
and uh, think about this vision that he had that
he created, which was really more of like these half walls,
but that was there so that you could pin up
projects and then all these different and have a little
privacy when you needed privacy. Yeah, and then um a
lot of desk space with different components you could add
(17:19):
on to it, like bookshelves and so on and so forth,
so that the person who was working there could spread out, um,
could have all the things that they needed at hand. Yeah,
make it their own. You don't have to. You're not
ruled by that in and out box. And you would
have varying levels of workspace so that you can you
can sit down and you can and you can also
stand up and work. And of course that's growing more
(17:39):
and more popular these days with the individuals who want
to stand and work all day. Right. I mean it
was very forward thinking, but now this is what used
to exist before cubicles, and we're talking about those open
bullpens where there were really small dusks like think about
school desks that were just lined up one after that
there with no privacy. So in a sense, this this
(18:02):
utopian vision was a vast improvement. Sounds great, right, So
what happened? Where did it all go wrong? Well, with
the problem. The main problem here is that you're taking
an ideal and you're you're going to work that into
a business environment and into a business plan. You're going
to deal with space constraints, you're gonna deal with budget constraints,
and you're gonna end up with a product that looks
(18:24):
significantly different. Right, because we're talking about the late sixties here,
we're an increased workforce. We're talking about Uh, the real
estate costs just skyrocketing too. So they had to solve
that and they looked at this company, Herman Miller, a
lot of corporations, and said, can I cherry pick that
configuration to just choose what I want? Because if you do,
you you run into not not an excellent means of
(18:47):
creating an open workspace for your employee, but a way
of cramming more people into a given space and while
still providing them basically the workspace they needed to work.
And that's where this lovely idea of this action office
just was cherry picked to death and then eventually reconfigured
so that it just got smaller and smaller and smaller
(19:09):
until it became this corporate sardine can plan, these little
gray cells that you you slide yourself into. I was
looking at pictures of them because I sometimes forget what
they look like because I don't I've never worked in
a in a space that really had them. Um, because
I was in news newsrooms before this. I was working
for newspapers, and newspapers generally go with the open office.
(19:31):
So environment, because you're all working together, you're yelling at
each other, you're breaking into tears, um, you're collaborating on
this project on a deadline, and there's you know, there's
a lot of there's a certain amount of time wasting,
but a lot of just let's get this done. It's
so it's it's a cool environment, but it's not definitely
not a cubical environment. And then here, of course we
have this altered cubical environment we've described already. So uh
(19:55):
but but looking at these images, it really is soul
crushing some of these. I mean, it's just looks like
a cell and it has dominated the office landscape for
thirty years. That being said, now employers are going back
to this more um open bullpen configuration. So that's where
we begin to introduce a bunch of different problems, right
(20:16):
because here we're talking about the open office open office.
We've actually seen it parodied in recent TV shows like
Arrested Development the most recent season they have like this
basically a warehouse with this with like death spread out
across these spaces. Um parks and wreck had had that
business that John Ralphaeo and uh and disease open. That's
(20:40):
a huge space with all you know, like a desk
here and yeah, and it's become sort of a cliche
of startups. It has, and you know, various companies handle
things differently. There are some that will actually not have
any assigned seatings, so when you show up, you just
check out your laptop and then you go you go
to a desk check out a laptop for the day,
(21:02):
and then go find a place to sit. Yes, let's
let's make the workspace as much like a middle school
cafeteria as possible, because we all have fond memories of that.
Right now, I think the reason why employers are going
to this is one. It's really cheap. Right. You have
no walls, you have no partitions, you don't have to
worry about a ton of office furniture. Do the managers
still have closed off offices? I assume they do because
(21:23):
they have to have. Yeah, well not all, but there
are some companies where managers are out there with everybody
and there are no It just depends on So I
can feel better about about it if if the managers
rolling this out, Um, we're partaking of this new environment,
because a lot of times it feels like I have
this great idea for you guys. You're not gonna have
offices or cubicles. You're just gonna sort of exists in
(21:44):
a comfy space. If you need me, I'll be in
my office. Yeah, but offices are necessary because you have
to have some measure of privacy. Oh no, no, I'm
I'm a big believer in office because if you have.
If someone's gonna be fired, it needs to happen in office.
If someone's gonna be in you for a job, it
probably needs to have an inside of an office, So
off closed offices are necessary. Um And I think that
(22:07):
the privacy afforded by the right kind of cubicle is
is certainly necessary to my work environment. Like I can't
imagine if we were all setting around on bean bags here,
um and I was having to to try and work
on a laptop while Jonathan Stricklan shoots basketball and tells
me about his weekend, I would lose my mind. Uh.
I think though, that this is a trend that is
going to continue, because again it's a it comes down
(22:29):
to money and the The other part of this is
that so many companies are beginning to or have already
adopted pretty robust teleworking policy. Why waste the money and
the space on on on me having a designated office
space or of a designated cubicle if I'm only in
once a week, twice a week, three times a week,
(22:50):
which is where you have an unassigned desk space, and
it sort of makes sense because if you're only going
to be in a couple of days a week. Well,
then great, and it's sort of it is a fair
trade up. I would feel. It's like it's hard to
complain about about that if you were getting multiple telework
days per week and they said, oh, by the way,
you don't really get to have your own office anymore, right, right,
you really get to have your own designated space. Now,
(23:10):
this is probably something that a lot of listeners are experiencing. Um.
And I say that because, according to Susan Caine and
her New York Times article The Rise of the New
Group Think, virtually all American workers now spend time on teams.
That's a that's a new thing, right, teams were you know,
you're not just working individually anymore. And some seventy inhabit
these open plan offices, which she says, no one has
(23:32):
a room of their own. Well, you know, back to
what I was talking about newsrooms and you if you
worked their newsrooms, have you so so again? Like that's
the type of operation where an open workspace makes perfect
sense because it is a team effort to get this done.
There's a there's a certain amount of leave me alone
while I write my my paper, right righte? My article? Um,
(23:53):
and the old days you used to go cigarette me
and they would sick a cigarette in your mouth. That's
what the old timing we're telling me. Um, I'm sure
I can see it. And it's a very I like
the I like the environment of the newsroom because I
think that it's very intense and it gets it can
get very loud. I can sort of like when the
anxiety rises, so too does the volume of the voices.
(24:14):
But I was very good at just blocking all that out.
And because you know, when your heads down, your heads down. UM.
I had a co worker by the name I'm going
to go and outer Rachel Oswald because she's still a
fabulous journalist out there in the world. Um. But she
had this thing where she would be on deadline. She
would be finishing the front page story that I needed
to put in the paper that I was editing, and uh,
(24:36):
and she everyone has their own way of getting work done.
Her way was to put her headphones in and listen
to show tunes and and seeing out loud, seeing the
show tunes out loud that she was finishing the article.
And so you know, it's like, you know, it's it's
it's night already, want to go home, and it's not
the time to listen to your co workers sing show tunes.
But you know this is how you're going to get there.
(24:57):
You have to let Rachel singer show tunes and finish
the front page story. Um I wanted to point out
that if if you feel like your office space is shrinking,
if you're in a cubicle, or if you're an open
plan or even if you're in office with capital, it
turns out that the average square foot or square feet
per worker fell from two hundred to one hundred and
(25:21):
seventy six in This is in stark contrast to about
five hundred square feet that were allotted for each office
worker in the seventies, so you can see it's just
like slowly being whittled down. And there's this idea that
as a result of this lack of space and this
bullpen sort of environment, that there is an increased amount
(25:45):
of anxiety, aggression and poor health. And this is from
researcher Dr venesh Omen from the Queensland University of Technologies
Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. He said that nine
of the research, the outcome of working in an open
plan office was seen as negative. With these types of
offices causing stress and conflict and high blood pressure and
(26:07):
high staff turnover. So you can begin to see this,
like if you talk about the anxiety or aggression, you
can see this in an open office plan, because if
you're in the middle of that, you are very aware
of your coworkers conversations of perhaps the glade lavender air
freshener that they put up um or even like some
(26:29):
of the little habits, maybe the clipping of their nails
or toe nails at their desk. I really I could
hear that all day and look at that all day. Um,
So that begins to really sort of heighten what people
are feeling our distractions and annoying and you get that
that higher blood pressure and you get more stressed out.
(26:49):
So it sort of makes sense that in these environments
you're asking people to do very specific work, sometimes work
that requires a lot of attention, and yet here all
these different things going on all around you. Yeah, you
end up putting headphones in to cut off the noise
and try and concentrate more. But then with that comes
to the added uh fright of someone trying to get
your attention every now and then, and that just ups
(27:11):
the anxiety again. The startle response. Yeah, I mean, and
it comes out a lot of people enjoy. I mean,
I enjoy the privacy and space in which to do
my creative thing. And uh and really that to me,
that's more valuable at this stage of my career than
team work, because really, who's my team, Like, you're on
my team. Noel's on my team once a week for
(27:33):
a few hours, and then Tyler's on my team like
a few hours a week. Tyler's our video producer, and
nol is our podcast producer. And of course we're all
wearing matching T shirts right now. Um, and we are
a team. But you're right, I mean, what we all
do is is largely very independent. And Susan Caine and
the other article, The Rise of the New Group thinks
(27:53):
so that this is really important for people who are
creative but they're also introverts. They need to have that space.
And we've talked about this before. Um, they need to
feel like they have privacy and freedom from interruption, And
this is where it's really important that that that's another
thing that bugs me about the potential of a of
a manager with an office deciding things. Also the idea
of an extrovert who's a manager with an office deciding
(28:14):
how everyone else's space is gonna work, Like, Hey, guys,
let's just do this. That's a big old work party, NonStop,
realizing that most of us do not want to attend,
or some of us do not want to attend the
work party, and the idea of the work party alone
is enough to give us the shivers. Well, I think
that there should be opportunity for informal collaborations, right that.
That's I think why they say, hey, come in, make
(28:36):
sure you're in the office X amount of time, or
we're gonna have an actual meeting about this. But um,
it turns out that if you have those sort of
informal like hey, how's it going, you know, uh, and
you share some ideas that you then take that inspiration
from that conversation and you go away and you do
the actual work. Right, So if you just sat around
all day collaborating, nothing would get done. Yeah, it kind
(28:58):
of comes back to what we're talking about the caffeine
an episode, the idea that when you do you take
your coffee, you caffeinate, Uh, then you're able to focus
on a top on a given topic. But then you're
not doing the free brain association activity that is the
hallmark of creative endeavor. So you need a balance between
the two. So we need to share spaces with our coworkers.
We need to be able to collaborate. Uh. We need
(29:20):
to shoot basketball, uh hoops with Jonathan strict but John,
I don't know why Jonathan shooting basketball in this to
my knowledge, he doesn't shoot basketball. But at any rate,
you need to uh shoot some hoops with Jonathan every
now and then. But then you also need to be
able to to walk away from Jonathan and find a
place of quiet. It's true, and the quiet is the
big deal, right, I mean, this is the chief complaint
(29:41):
that most people have in any kind of office setting
is that it's just not quiet enough. There's too much
going on. I can hear someone on the phone talking
and I can't hear the other person on the other
line or you know who they're talking to you, and
that's maddening. We've discussed that in episodes. Hearing half of
phone call is one of the most disturbing things possible,
because your brain wants to loop everything up, even if
(30:02):
that's not your primary activity, far from it. From the day,
your brain wants to make sense of it. Yeah, it's
distracted because it's trying to make sense of that conversation
and and um fill in those loops. But I did
want to point out that there was a survey of
sixty five thousand people over a decade. This was in
North America, Europe, Africa, and Australia, Australia, Australia, and they
(30:24):
did they said, this is the thing people. You know,
half of these people say that they need privacy, and
they need speech privacy. So they need to be able
to make a phone call or have a conversation without
everybody hearing it, and they also need not to hear
everybody else. So I thought it was interesting that a
software company called Autodesk, which was setting up a new office,
they wanted to test out something called a pink noise system. Okay. Now,
(30:48):
this is described as a soft whoosh that's admitted over
loud speakers and it sounds like a ventilation system, but
it is specially formulated to match the frequencies and human voices. Okay,
So unbeknown it's sort of an organic white noise. Thus
the pink noise. It's like a fleshy white noise. I
(31:08):
have to say the pink noise sounds kind of nice, right, yeah,
a little dirty, but nice, like you know, like a
ventilation lullaby. Really yeah, it makes me think of the
ventilation system is alive and fleshy though, Like we're in
a Cronenberg office and do you think of pink good
dripping down from it? I have to say, But unbeknownst
to the employees in that office, they had no idea
this was running, and it was run for three months.
(31:30):
They shut it off and boom, they immediately got complaints
and everyone lost their minds. Well, they couldn't pinpoint it.
They didn't know. They just kept saying like I can
hear so and so and there's you know, like it
was like that day that the power was knocked out
and it turned out the lights were on, but they
had to shut off all of the really high end
stuff like the ventilation system, and it suddenly felt wrong. Yeah,
(31:54):
we were like, what's going on in here? Well, the
same thing happens I think around like six o'clock in
the building and UM used to when I would stay
to six, like that's when I knew it was time
to go, Like, feels wrong in here, something weird? You
have those cues, right. Uh. So it was interesting because
apparently that that system was helping to muffle conversations, so
(32:16):
all of a sudden people could hear conversations from sixty
feet away as opposed to me. You know, it sort
of deadening that sound for them. Well, I think we
ought to introduce we can call it green noise, and
it'll be um, just a constant like wishiness, but with
kind of ghostly voices too, so that you're you're constantly
(32:37):
a little bit on edge, Robert like that. Yeah, so like, yeah,
it's kind of like an ectoplasm based pink noise, I think.
So it's sort of like the mathieson um novel. It's
like come out no um oh I am legend, yes,
all right, Yeah, that's what we all need is is
this promise of zombies behind the our office door. So
(32:59):
it's hard to think about this open office concept in
lack of privacy is running parallel with this other issue
that we have in our lives of not having any
privacy anywhere because of the Internet or the amount of
information that we're giving out um. And it's it's sort
of interesting, do you know, to to look at it
that way and wonder if this is just us really
(33:22):
fulfilling and adaption to what our current circumstances are. Is
this really a big deal? Mm? Yeah, I don't know.
Like it does remind me one of the criticisms of
the open office spaces that people going outside to take
personal phone calls instead of having them at their desks,
which doesn't sound like really that bad of a thing,
but the idea is that supposedly you're losing some time
(33:42):
and doing that. Um, but it's is it. It's not
like that it would be any less private to have
that conversation in the office space. You're just seeing people.
Like so much of it is just our perceived privacy.
We need to have this agreed upon fiction of how
private our workspace is. Like, for instance, working in a
crowded coffee shop to me is great. I can I
(34:05):
can really put in my headphones and and just barrel
through a project. But I'm certainly not private. If anything,
I'm visible by more people, but I don't really I
don't tune not to know any of them, so it's
almost like they're not there. So but it's all about
just me creating this uh, this environment, uh, this this
world view in which I have privacy. Well, that's right,
because all those people around you are not saddled with uh,
(34:28):
you know, biography that you know. So if you're in
a coffee shop and someone next to you is yapping
about something, then you're probably not You can probably just say, Okay,
that person is yapping. I can crowd them out of
my mind. But if you put a name to them
and some instances are collaborations that you've had with them,
perhaps then you start to feel like, oh, could you
please quit talking. So it's interesting to see that we
(34:53):
do have to create this illusion for ourselves, and I
think that maybe that's that's ultimately what the answer is.
You have to have an environment that allows people to
have privacy, that allows people to work together, and throughout
all of it create an illusion that they can accept
that they have the privacy to work right. And part
of that allusion too, is making these people feel like
(35:14):
they have choices, like, for instance, we're gonna decorate our
our cubicles and feel like it is ours, it's my
corner of the street, right, yes, which makes you feel
like you have a little bit more control over your environment. Yeah,
the freedom to put up a poster of a barbarian
lady cutting off a monster's head like that is important.
I fight for that absolutely, not only in this workplace,
(35:35):
but the next in anyone else's workplace. I will write
an email on your behalf to your boss about your
right to put up that barbarian poster. There you go
take them up on it, guys. All right, Well, on
that note, let's call over the robot and do a
little listener mail that all of this comes to us
from Facebook. And uh, this first one comes from Brad,
(35:56):
dear Robert and Julie. I just listened to a writer's
letter about naming holidays for the seven Deadly sins. He
could not come up with a holiday that matched envy.
So I thought about it, and I came up with
your birthday. It is the only holiday typically celebrated by
one person at a time. On another note, I'm a
late time subscriber to your podcast and have been trying
to catch up furiously. I'm a truck driver and listen
(36:17):
to about tin podcasts today, uh and possibly a day um,
and I'll get to that in a second. Um. I
should be caught up in no time. Sorry for the
pronunciation and writing, I am using voice text to write
this message keep up the great work. I like that,
and I like how he's you know, trucking along and
doing the safe thing here and using uh. I mean,
I guess I knew that was possible because of all
(36:39):
the serious stuff, But I think this is the first
time that we've had a listener right in and actually
told us that they were using a voice to tech
software to write to us. It's kind of crazy and
futuristic in its own way. I would be interested to
know since he has sort of a mobile office of one,
what sort of things in his office environment as a
truck or you know, um work for him or don't
(37:03):
work for him, And does he ever get into big
arguments with himself? Yeah, the mobile workplaces, that's a whole
another issue in and of itself because you get into
you certainly get into issues of economics there because it's
one there. And this is exploring in Molly Edmands article
that we decided earlier about pubical death. Um. You know,
there are a number of concerns about the posture and
pete keyboard position and eyes train and all of this
(37:25):
are related to a physical, non moving office. But then
in a vehicle like if you have a keyboard to
the side, um uh, such as in a you know,
any kind of like a survey vehicle or a police car, etcetera.
They're a whole host of new orgonomic problems that present themselves,
such as constantly twisting over to use a keyboard at
a weird angle. Um. So anyway, that's a whole another issue.
(37:46):
But yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to hear about the
passing of time too in that context, as we just
did an episode about time. So if you're in that
environment and you're on the road, how does that pass
for you? Um? What sort of things make it pass
quicker or slower? This one comes to us from Amanda
in uh Saskatchewan ox Bow, um, Saskatchewan to be a specific.
(38:06):
She writes and says, I thought i'd write in about
your recent coffee episode. I am one of the super
sensitive types. The coffee is reserved for very important times
only I if I have to stay up all late,
all night and most of the next day sort of
reasons only. Hopefully my abstaining is keeping me extra creative
three exclamation points. Uh So yeah, it sounds it sounds
like uh, I've certainly talked to people like that who
(38:29):
are just ultra sensitive to it and only use it
if they really need to stay up like crazy. But yeah, uh,
then we also heard from Bonnie listener. Bonnie writes in
and says, I love coffee, So I really enjoyed the
recent episode on coffee. My dad started giving me the
extra little bit of his coffee and uh, they wouldn't
fit in his work thermis when I was just a
(38:50):
little kid, and then by junior high he was making
enough for me to have a real cup of coffee
before school. I never get the caffeine jitters, nor do
I ever feel a jolt from drinking a cup of Joe.
Guess I have built up quite a tolerance over the years.
What I really wanted to ask, though, is which of
your co workers do you think would have a jar
of urine in their office? In their office? And are
you and are they fellow podcasters that we the public
(39:13):
might be familiar with, And if we guessed which ones
they were, would you tell us if we were right?
Do you want to feel that one? Um? Now, I
will say, the coworker that has the most um liquid
receptacles on their desk at any given time has to
be Holly of stuffy miss in history class. I just
noticed there will be numerous cups and and cans. I
(39:37):
believe they're empty, but they could conceivably be filled with urine.
I'm not saying she's doing it, but I'm saying the
ultimate like lady like person in this building, you know that, right?
Like she's not. I mean, if you went, if I
tell her what you just said, we actually I will,
and we'll stand there and let's register the horror on
her face. So I would not. I would not say
(39:59):
that that Holly would be the YearIn. No, No, no,
she wouldn't. But I have someone in mind. Are they
a podcaster? H But I think I feel like I
kind of need to ask. I feel like I kind
of need to ask that person if this arrangement is
okay before agreeing to it. I'm very intrigued by this.
(40:19):
I would love for you guys to guess who I'm thinking.
But you know that person has to be a willing
participant in this's okay? Alright, Bonnie, well you heard that.
Tune in later for more details. All right. We also
heard from Meg. Meg writes and it says I was
just listening to the coffee podcast popular with a lot
of people and wanted to chime in since you wanted
to hear from creative coffee drinkers. Um. As I've written before,
(40:42):
I'm a professional miniatures painter and have been for the
last five years. I'm an avid coffee drinker, especially before painting.
I find it really increases me my creativity and productivity.
I also have experiences with hand jitters like Robert mentioned,
uh he gets before he paints minis. Painting is a
very zen activity and helps keep calm and centered throughout
my day. One question I have for you guys is
(41:03):
how does caffeine affect people with a d h D.
I am a d D and I know others who
are too, and we all swear by drinking caffeine eated
beverages on days we forget our Riddlin or other stimulant
medications at home. We have found it acts like Riddlin
in a pinch, and caffeine actually helps our brains to focus,
says Robert. Anytime you come to Seattle, let me know
and maybe we can get a paint jam in sometime.
(41:26):
All right, that's uh okay, I think I'm gonna have
put that in the file for future h D episode
because we've talked about this and we've had another request
for it in terms of creativity a d D and
a d h D and how it may or may
not affect creativity, so we'll have to explore that. And
just as far as miniatures go, I was really intrigued
that that Meg, even though she has experienced apparently some
(41:48):
of the hand jitters before, that she makes a regular
point of drinking coffee before she she paints. But maybe
she has naturally steady your hands than I do, so
she doesn't suffer as much. Well, And then there is
that level of sensitivity to Indeed, everybody has kind of
a different cocktail in their body, reacting differently to it.
And finally we heard from Matthew. Matthew retz Inus is high.
Robert and Juley love listening to your podcasts, and I
(42:10):
often find myself imagining your recording set up for some reason.
I picture a dark room, devoid of any distracting pictures, etcetera,
simply two stools, a table, and two mics. Any chance
you would post a picture of your actual recording set up, well,
I would say that we don't really have to, because
if you watch the stuff you should know TV show.
The setup they have in that show is fake but
(42:34):
looks sort of like a clean TV version of what
we actually have. Well, you're talking about the red um
batting that serves as installation, right or two actually deaden
the sound vibrations so that you don't hear the traffic
too much there on Peachtree Street. But we also have
pictures of bats um and I would think we've mentioned
(42:55):
this before. Picasso in his underpants, Yes, Tesla over there,
and a book on Santa Fe design and the wit
and wisdom of fishing. Yes, if this gives people a
better idea of this sort of clutter that we have
around us. We also have a terrarium with a homunculous
in it. We have we have a necronomicon in a
vacuum sealed chamber, and UH a collection of various potions,
(43:16):
some of which have been tested on our interns, some
of which have not. I will not confirm or deny.
All Right, Well, if you have something you would like
to share with us, um and particularly about today's episode,
about the workspace. What's your workspace like and how does
it affect your creativity? About your your ability to to
jam and brainstorm, arm with your your coworkers. Do you
(43:37):
have a mobile uh working environment? If so, how do
you how do you remain creative in that? How do
you remain comfortable in that? UM? Let us know all
this stuff is game. You can find us in a
number of places. Stuff to Blew Your Mind dot com
is the mothership. That's where all our blog posts go,
the videos, the audio, you name it, pictures of us.
If you don't know what we look like and you're
(43:57):
trying to figure that out, well that's where you need
to go to find it. You can also find us
on social media. While we're on Facebook, we're stuff to
Blow your Mind there on tumbler as well. And also
you can find us unclear where handle is blows in Mind.
Oh and then YouTube mind stuff show. That's right, And
you can also send us an email at blow of
the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this
(44:22):
and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
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