Cubicle Doom

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, 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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

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, 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

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

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

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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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,

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

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 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 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 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, 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,

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

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, 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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.

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,

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot Com