{"id":1962,"date":"2007-01-02T11:24:42","date_gmt":"2007-01-02T19:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/01\/just_keep_them_away_from_bad_influences_like_mary-kate_and_theyll_adjust_fine.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T15:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T20:05:00","slug":"just_keep_them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/01\/just_keep_them.html","title":{"rendered":"Just Keep Them Away From Bad Influences Like Mary-Kate And They&#8217;ll Adjust Fine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What first appeared to downtown observers to be an influx of chunky Midwesterners on some sort of semester-abroad program <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/31\/fashion\/31google.html?ex=1325221200&#038;en=d89c4be1fe2096c1&#038;ei=5090&#038;partner=rssuserland&#038;emc=rss\">turns out to be employees of the new Googleplex<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>From lava lamps to abacuses to cork coffee tables, the offices may as well be a Montessori school conceived to cater to the needs of future science-project winners. The Cond\u00c3\u00a9 Nast and Hearst corporations have their famous cafeterias designed by, respectively, Frank Gehry and Norman Foster; but Google has free food, and plenty of it, including a sushi bar and espresso stations. There are private phone booths for personal calls and showers and lockers for anyone running or biking to work.<\/p>\n<p>The campuslike workspace is antithetical to the office culture of most New York businesses. It is a vision of a workplace utopia as conceived by rich, young, single engineers in Silicon Valley, transplanted to Manhattan.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>Food is a major perk at the Manhattan Googleplex. Every Tuesday afternoon, tea with crumpets and scones is served. In the cafeteria a dry-erase board lists local purveyors of the ingredients in the meals like a sign at the Union Square Greenmarket. (Dry-erase boards are big in Google culture; ideas flow quickly).<\/p>\n<p>All the free food has created a problem familiar to college freshmen. &#8220;Everyone gains 10 or 15 pounds when they start working here,&#8221; said James Tipon, a member of the sales team, who actively contributes to the four pounds of M&#038;Ms consumed by New York Googlers daily. &#8220;I definitely gained that when I started working here, but I think I shed some of it,&#8221; Mr. Tipon said. &#8220;I try to be disciplined but it&#8217;s really hard.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What first appeared to downtown observers to be an influx of chunky Midwesterners on some sort of semester-abroad program turns out to be employees of the new Googleplex: From lava lamps to abacuses to cork coffee tables, the offices may as well be a Montessori school conceived to cater to the needs of future science-project [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,12,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturalanthropological","category-manhattan","category-sliding_into_the_abyss_of_elitism_pretentiousness","category-sunday_styles_articles_that_make_you_want_to_flee_new_york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}