What our office is for

Our office, at least the one in St. Louis, can be quiet. Sometimes it’s too quiet.

But sometimes it feels very loud.

Sometimes some of us are here early. Other times others of us are here late.

Or we all just have a normal day in the office.

Our office has desks. Our office has conference rooms. Our office has couches.

We have comfortable chairs at our desks and a couple stools that encourage better seated posture.

We have Apple laptops. Big monitors. iPads. PC tablets. Drawing tablets.

We have wifi, speakerphones, a Smart TV, whiteboards, printers.

We have a kitchen, bathrooms, even a meditation room.

We have a treadmill—but nobody really uses it.

We have a coat rack, trash cans, recycling containers.

We have a very old table called the “Mensam de Inopinatus”—which is Latin for “Table of the Unexpected” (according to Google Translate).

You’re supposed to just bring in random interesting things and leave them on the table for a while.

After a while you’re supposed to take them back home and bring in something else. You never know what to expect.

We also have a much newer table for treats like donuts, muffins, candy, &c.

We have a water cooler. No one ever talks around it, ever.

We change the keychains for the restroom keys every month (one of us used to have a keychain collection).

We have shelves for books. We have a lot of books.

We have drawers for art and office supplies. We have a lot of supplies.

And we have cloth cubby cubes and shelves for our personal stuff.

There are a couple beds for dogs.

There is art on the walls.

And a really big paper calendar.

Natural light streams through the many windows.

There are no cubicles or private offices.

But there is a locked closet, for important files and such.

Outside, there is a vibrant neighborhood full of people, pets, stores, gyms, groceries, homes, coffee shops, restaurants.

The city’s biggest park is just a few blocks away.

Our office is not “get profiled in a magazine” fancy, but it’s not boring either.

It’s just… nice.

Yeah, we have a ping pong table.

That’s what our office is like.

I don’t think it matters much where we bought our desks (IKEA) or our chairs (Centro Modern Furnishings) or our conference tables (custom-made by St. Louis woodworkers), but they work nicely for us.

And that’s good, because we too usually are working here in our office: we talk, we plan, we draw, we write, we design, we animate, we critique, we iterate. It’s good for that.

And that’s what our office is for.