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The Democratic presidential candidates have plenty of big plans for if/when they take over the White House, including erasing student debt, expanding health-care coverage, building more affordable housing and addressing climate change.
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is embracing those issues as part of his presidential campaign, as well. But he’s also tackling a subject the other candidates haven’t addressed: how to lay out the highest office in the land.
Bloomberg took to Twitter TWTR, +0.06% on Monday to share his vision for working in the White House: “As president, I’ll turn the East Room into an open office plan, where I’ll sit with our team,” he wrote, alongside a photoillustration of the East Room jammed with pods and workers — himself included — sitting in the center of it, just as he’d done for years at Bloomberg LP, the financial data and information company he founded in 1981.
“I’ll use the Oval Office for some official functions — never for tweeting,” he continued, clearly subtweeting President Trump, who has been a prolific user of Twitter while in office. “But the rest of the time, I’ll be where a leader should be: with the team.”
What the former New York mayor perhaps didn’t realize is that there’s been a growing backlash against open-plan office arrangements for years. By some estimates, 70% of offices are now laid out in open-plan format. One survey found 76% of Americans “hate open offices,” with their top complaints including lack of privacy, overhearing too many personal conversations, and struggling to concentrate. Indeed, 70% of workers report feeling distracted when they’re working. And a 2018 Harvard Business School study found that moving to open offices decreased face-to-face interactions among employees, who, among the study’s sample, began sending more emails and instant messages, instead, so as not to disturb co-workers uninvolved in a conversation. There’s also some evidence to suggest that open office plans expose workers to viruses (of the medical variety) more frequently. And, as a result, pricey soundproof pods have begun springing up in workspaces for privacy-starved employees.
Read more: The dreaded open office is driving workers to drastic action
So critics on Twitter were quick to inform Bloomberg that his open plan sounds like a version of “hell”:
Others questioned how cramming so many people into a space would jibe with national-security protocols — not to mention fire-safety standards:
And there were many inspiring takes on other ways to renovate the East Room, such as turning it into a swimming pool or a roller rink:
Bloomberg’s spokeswoman sent the following response to MarketWatch shortly after the first iteration of this story was published: “As the founder and leader of one of the fastest growing and most effective businesses in the world, which employs over 20,000 people across 73 countries, Mike has successfully implemented open office plans both in his business and for twelve years as the Mayor of New York City. Unlike Donald Trump, Mike and his teams are successful because he has built his career on tearing down walls and building environments where people work together to get big things done.”
Bloomberg also wrote in a recent LinkedIn post that he believes in tearing down walls. “I don’t have a private office, [much] less a corner office. I sit at the same-sized desk as everyone else, with no walled cubicles. It’s a completely open environment,” he wrote. “If someone needs to ask me or any other senior person a question, they walk up and ask it. No getting through a gatekeeper. All of our offices, in 73 countries around the world, follow these same principles.”
