The Wildly Appealing, Totally Doomed Future of Work
If you work at a low-slung office park, or a downtown high-rise, or a Victorian manse–turned–medical office, or any other of the previously normal office spaces where knowledge workers still work, you might not even know what it means to work at a WeWork.
That’s how people refer to them, if you didn’t know. “Oh, it’s a WeWork,” your friend at the lifestyle-media company or the stealth-mode tech start-up might tell you when you meet for mezcal negronis before you both go back to the office for two more hours. WeWork dizzily combines every trend in contemporary white-collar life: the “creative office space” vibes of advertising agencies and dot-com firms, the dark wood and chic-shanty vibes of today’s modish eateries. Its snack options—protein parfaits and dried seaweed—split the difference between manospheric “fuel” and campy “healthfulness.” Indulgence mates with generativity; tenants can get an IPA on draft, but , a ceiling that betrays the ideal age and liver condition of the WeWork
