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The Rise of the WeWorking Class

nytimes.com

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Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#51

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

BucketSort wrote: post #39
peterwwillis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 1960s, if you were black and seated at a lunch counter, a white person would spit in your face. Which was considered perfectly civil for a lot of white people. In some cultures, at various times (including today), the civil thing to do is to berate and even beat a woman if she appears in public without covering her hair or face. To the guy in the story, telling someone to not use the plastic water bottle…

Those were not civil actions for civilly minded people. Of course, people loathe each other behind closed doors and the less respectable people bring it out in public. Let me ask you this, would such an interaction as described in the OP comment happen in Japan? They seem to understand the importance of respect.

"Seem to"

Japan has nasty edges, just like every other country.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#52

Post by notacoward »

peteretep wrote: post #43
notacoward wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're answering a different question than was asked. When did it become acceptable to politely suggest a different personal choice? Since always, as you say. When did it become acceptable to disrespect them for a personal choice? Pretty recently, and should have been never. That includes the personal choice to rationalize that kind of condescending priggishness online. What kind of person gets their jollies…

Not all personal choices warrant civility, and it’s not always possible for someone negatively affected by other people’s personal choices to be civil.

> Not all personal choices warrant civility

True in some cases, but would you seriously put a single-use bottle into that category? The harm from that, while undeniably real, doesn't seem immediate or severe enough to justify jumping past civility to disrespect. You made a statement that disrespect is generally acceptable, and I disagree. While there are exceptions, disrespect should generally be avoided. To make the point even more bluntly, I think normalizing disrespect makes assholes of us all.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#53

Post by [deleted] »

BucketSort wrote: post #19
rekshaw wrote: post #9

A recent executive mandate declared the company a “meat-free” organization. When I interviewed McKelvey not long after the Summit, he had a very fuzzy time trying to explain the meaning of the “eight pillars” of its CultureOS and the relationships among them. But when he noticed that the P.R. representative happened to be carrying a single-use plastic water bottle, he admonished her to be mindful of her own consumpti…

When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? Although I'm 29, I still remember a time where there was at least the pretense of civility. Civility was the oil that kept this machine running smoothly, now it's sputtering left and right. We don't even use formal names like Mr./Ms. as much as we once did, if at all. I felt that was an important part of creating…

[deleted]

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#54

Post by nabnob »

dsr_ wrote: post #10

I wonder if WeWork has already started an espionage (excuse me, business intelligence) program or whether that's a future development. Consider: an ordinary landlord knows how many desks you have, how many people show up on an average day, and how much garbage/recycling you put out. WeWork has operatives who can measure what percentage of your employees' days are spent at their desks, what they like to do for fun, wh…

That's exactly what their plan is:

>Fano sees WeWork buildings as one giant sensor for data collection, and he wants to map them down to the object. Understanding the space means understanding how to make it more efficient and better for members.

https://www.businessinsider.com/weworks-secret-weapon-will-b...

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#55

Post by detaro »

ohithereyou wrote: post #48
detaro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it advertising?

The article is one giant ad for WeWork.

On first read it totally didn't come across that way, but on second look I might just be too far out of the target group to recognize as positive what it advertises...

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#56

Post by peteretep »

notacoward wrote: post #52
peteretep wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all personal choices warrant civility, and it’s not always possible for someone negatively affected by other people’s personal choices to be civil.

> Not all personal choices warrant civility True in some cases, but would you seriously put a single-use bottle into that category? The harm from that, while undeniably real, doesn't seem immediate or severe enough to justify jumping past civility to disrespect. You made a statement that disrespect is generally acceptable, and I disagree. While there are exceptions, disrespect should generally be avoided. To make the…

I don’t believe that incivility and disrespect are synonyms. It’s possible to rob someone blind in a civilised way, and equally to bluntly do someone a good turn.

You’re jumping backwards and forwards between the specific and the general here, but yes, I think it’s appropriate to admonish a PR person who knows there’s a journalist around for being off brand because _that’s literally their job_.

To speak to “it makes assholes of all of us”, appeals to civility and politeness have a long and sordid history of being used to oppress people, cf tone policing.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#57

Post by pjc50 »

BucketSort wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? That time is lost in the mists of history, though which choices this is acceptable for have been different in different times and places.

Yeah, I guess I should have said "mainstream personal choices." If one does something deviant, politeness has typically always gone out the window. These days people pick fights just so they can put themselves in some virtuous light. It's really annoying.

These are defined the other way round: "mainstream" is the set of things people accept, and "deviant" is what they call things they don't.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#59

Post by Kurtz79 »

scandox wrote: post #32
puranjay wrote: post #13

I recently moved to WeWork after nearly half a decade of working in plainly inferior coworking spaces. It's early days, but I wouldn't be wrong to say that this is probably the first time in my career that I haven't felt, well, "unmoored". I freelanced through college, then through grad school, then I worked for a couple of years from home before moving to coworking spaces. At all these coworking spaces, despite thei…

So would it be fair to say it's like freelancing but you feel like you're part of a corporation? Like freelancing with the social and motivational aspects of working at say Google or whoever?

Not OP, but I guess it is more similar to being at college.

Re: The Rise of the WeWorking Class

#60

Post by dragonwriter »

BucketSort wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When did it become acceptable to straight up disrespect someone to their face for their personal choices? That time is lost in the mists of history, though which choices this is acceptable for have been different in different times and places.

Yeah, I guess I should have said "mainstream personal choices." If one does something deviant, politeness has typically always gone out the window. These days people pick fights just so they can put themselves in some virtuous light. It's really annoying.

No, these days behaviors which you remember being unquestionably mainstream are now on the disputed boundary where some substantial number of people see them as deviant.
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