Is This the Office of the Future or a $5B Waste of Space?

I can't be the only one who's tired of the USA's alcohol-drenched startup culture.

In the first four paragraphs:

keg, keg, beer, bar, tap, bar, pub, microbrews, tap, happy hour, tequila, margaritas, "90,000 glasses of beer".

However, I do think the small studio + co-located coworking space is a winning concept. Bundle in things like laundry service and perhaps catering (everyone needs food, not everyone needs alcohol) or even just Soylent/Jakeshake, and it's starting to be a pretty useful value-add, editing out all of the generic day to day tasks that suck up one's only nonrenewable resource.

Frankly, as an America who also likes to drink, I find it tiring, too. Because it's not about the drinking. It's about about dedicating your whole life to the corporate ideal. Screw that. That's not why I got out of working for The Man. Why are we starting all these startups that don't respect our work life balance? How are we going to expect any employer to respect us if we don't respect ourselves?

And WeWork in particular is flipping expensive. Most of what they offer can be had by buying $5 lattes every hour at your local coffee shop. I'm a member at a more bare-bones competitor to WeWork[0] that, if you price it out, is cheaper than going to coffee shops. And it's also quiet, there's a printer, and the wifi works all the time. And you're still getting coffee out of the deal.

For WeWork's prices, I want to start having some private locker space or something, so I can maybe leave a laptop, lock up my papers, etc., not have to hump it around on the metro all day. If you want that level at WeWork, you have to pay such an exorbitant fee that you might as well just get three of your closest friends together to rent your own office.

At least then I wouldn't have to deal with a bunch of overgrown children having nerf battles.

[0] http://www.cove.is, though I'm pretty sure they're only available in the DC Metro area.

EDIT: I just checked, and they've recently dropped their prices. WeWork's entry level used to be in the $100/mo range. Cove is still cheaper, and the private storage levels are still very expensive.

I worked for a startup that grew past startup phase and no one drank.

Don't worry, you aren't the only one. I long to be transported to a time or place where humans weren't so accepting... no, seeking such blatant disrespect to their personal dignity and craft.

It seems to be one facet of a theme of infantilization and youth glorification in work culture and society at large. I am not sure whether it has any relationship with the rise of the "social" plague in industry, and the widespread infiltration of VC onto college campuses (and now elementary school playgrounds), where the youth are increasingly primed for dependency through the advertising and systematic denial of experiences.

Offices for adults these days are becoming more like playgrounds, and playgrounds for kids are becoming more like jails. I can't understand all the psychodynamics at play, but something is clearly broken with the way we treat our youth and our narrowly defined notions of "fun".

Work culture is not about the worker or the work anymore, it is about creating an interdependent unit of labor. But if neither the quality of work nor the quality of life for the worker is emphasized, I am not sure what the purpose is besides to maintain social order.