Granted, there are people who actually *work* at shopping malls. But these “tours” of the Google offices in LA really don;t seem like tours of work sites. There are not a whole lot of people in evidence, and the vast majority of those seen doing something are shown relaxing, playing, eating, drinking.
I’m sure hiring a large percentage of the workforce to simply tick quota boxes seemed like a good idea to *somebody.*
One might wonder why I’m suddenly yammering on about this. I think it’s because this sort of thing offends me… it’s not that “work” should be an oppressive, dreary existence (been there), but because works should be about The Work. Granted I used to be an aerospace engineer, not a software worker; if Google’s latest update is a little wonky, who cares. If the latest jetliner is a little wonky, people *die.* So industries that actually matter should take themselves seriously. No goofy TikTok dance videos, no on-site clowns or cry-closets. The things that made our society successful have in recent years been not only neglected but denigrated. This has included objectivity, being on time, having a good work ethic, recognition of cause and effect and so on. I see these adult daycare centers as part and parcel of this. The people who work there seem to *not* actually work there. Granted *somebody* has to be doing the job; Price’s Law suggest that the square root of the number of employees are doing half the actual work. Regardless of how true that is, any place where *anything* gets done has to have some people who are actually working. And surrounding hard workers by slackers who are getting paid just as well as them and who are visibly being coddled… that has *got* to be a morale-killer among the productive. And doubtless many of the slackers would have turned into hard workers who would derive great and substantive meaning from being productive… but they’re being indoctrinated into a culture of bland excess and sloth.