Office Hell: The Demise of the Playful Workspace (Classic)
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early 90s, cutting-edge advertising agency Chiat/Day announced a radical plan, aimed at giving the company a jolt of creative renewal. They would sweep away corner offices and cubicles and replace them with zany open spaces, as well as innovative portable computers and phones. A brand new era of “hot-desking” had arrived.
Problems quickly began. Disgruntled employees found themselves hauling temperamental, clunky laptops and armfuls of paperwork all over the office; some even had to use the trunks of their cars as filing cabinets. Soon, the unhappy nomads had had enough.
Bad execution was to blame for the failure of this “playful” workspace. But Chiat/Day had made another mistake here, too – one that was more serious, more fundamental and altogether more common.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:15.7 | Hello, Tim here, and we've got a classic episode of cautionary tales for you this week while I'm on my |
| 0:21.4 | summer holidays. Office hell, the demise of the playful workspace. I hope you enjoy it and if you |
| 0:28.8 | do, maybe head over to Pushkin Plus because this Tuesday there'll be a brand new episode, |
| 0:34.5 | another cautionary tale about a disastrous invention that shaped the office of today. |
| 0:40.5 | To subscribe, head to Pushkin Plus on the show page on Apple Podcasts, or go to Pushkin.fm. |
| 0:46.4 | As well as an exclusive show every month, you also get all episodes ad-free. |
| 0:53.3 | Next week, here on the main feed, we are back in action |
| 0:56.1 | with a brand new episode of Cautionary Tales, |
| 0:59.4 | all about the worst poet in the world. |
| 1:02.7 | See you then. |
| 1:07.0 | By the end of the 1980s, |
| 1:09.8 | Shiat Day was the most fashionable advertising agency on the planet. |
| 1:15.0 | They'd commissioned a short film by the director of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott, to launch the Apple Mac, |
| 1:21.4 | pioneered the idea of using Super Bowl spots to create news, |
| 1:25.8 | and made an unforgettable series of adverts in which the energizer bunny |
| 1:29.9 | kept crashing through ads for other products. But an ad agency always needs to keep things fresh. |
| 1:37.5 | And so, in 1993, the agency's boss, Jay Shiat, announced a radical plan. |
| 1:45.8 | To give Shiat Day a jolt of creative renewal, |
| 1:49.8 | Jay Shiat was going to sweep away corner offices and cubicles and even desks. |
| 1:56.0 | Armed with the best mobile technology that 1993 had to offer, |
| 2:04.2 | Shiat Day employees would roam free in open spaces, winning sales and creating great ads wherever they wished. What's more, these spaces |
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