Speaker 1: Let me introduce you to a guy named Carl Pierre.
Speaker 1: Carl was twenty five years old when he became an
Speaker 1: employee at the we Work office in d C. He
Speaker 1: was just a few years out of college. He was
Speaker 1: excited about joining this fast growing startup, and he was
Speaker 1: surprised by how much of his job involved working with beer,
Speaker 1: tapping a beer keg, getting licenses to serve beer. And
Speaker 1: one morning he got a call there had been a
Speaker 1: beer disaster. This one dude, who turns out was like
Speaker 1: a guest of a member or something, was so like
Speaker 1: gung ho trying to get beer out. He broke the tap,
Speaker 1: beer started pouring out, and he's walked away. So I
Speaker 1: get a call the next day, the very next day,
Speaker 1: from the shoe store underneath our Chinatown location saying, dude,
Speaker 1: everything all of our inventories covered in gross, sticky beer,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell is going on? And I looked
Speaker 1: through the security recordings and I'm like I wanted to
Speaker 1: scream and like break everything. I was like this guy,
Speaker 1: this dude just uh. It was like, you know, a
Speaker 1: keg holds what nine nine beers, So imagine nine nine
Speaker 1: beers pouring down and pooling and yeah, of course it
Speaker 1: leaked through. To take out my iPhone and take photos
Speaker 1: from the insurance company. Oh, it was this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Beer was a central part of we worked brand, and
Speaker 1: here it was leaking through the floor and it was
Speaker 1: just like pools of beer. The entire place smells like
Speaker 1: a brewery. So not only did our space smell like awfulness,
Speaker 1: like it smelled like a yeast factory because it just
Speaker 1: kind of like percolated over the night too. When we
Speaker 1: wants all the beer poured out, they just stayed that
Speaker 1: way and then you know, the guy's floor to you
Speaker 1: just smelled like the entire block it smell like beer
Speaker 1: because when you open the doors, like a full keg,
Speaker 1: is so much booze. There's so much liquid and imagine
Speaker 1: pouring all the onto the floor and Lennon just walking
Speaker 1: away for hours. Hours you're listening to Foundering. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Ellen Hewitt. In the previous episode, we visited Adam Newman's
Speaker 1: childhood Kibbutz. We wanted to understand how it inspired we
Speaker 1: work and Adam's ideas about community and today in episode
Speaker 1: two of our season on we were we're going to
Speaker 1: tell you about what it was like inside we Work
Speaker 1: during its early chaotic years of growth as the company
Speaker 1: burst onto the business scene. We'll start around for a
Speaker 1: few years after the financial crash and the business world
Speaker 1: is getting back on its feet. There's a huge rise
Speaker 1: and remote work, a huge rise and distributed work. That's
Speaker 1: Teddy Kramer and early we Work employee. There are companies
Speaker 1: that don't even have office space that empower their employees
Speaker 1: to work from wherever they are. But we're still human.
Speaker 1: We're still you know, creatures that want to be around
Speaker 1: other people, and people need places. Facebook had just gone public,
Speaker 1: linked in too, and there was this buzz in the air,
Speaker 1: especially around startups two thousand twelve, two thirteen, when it
Speaker 1: was very early, when it was exciting, when that kind
Speaker 1: of startup dream was at its peak. I remember Instagram
Speaker 1: had just been bought by Facebook for a billion dollars,
Speaker 1: So that idea that anyone could just sit there, a
Speaker 1: couple of people, build an app and get rich. Ron
Speaker 1: John Roy was an early customer at we Work. He
Speaker 1: just quit his job to become an entrepreneur. And in
Speaker 1: fact it was Teddy who sold Ron john his we
Speaker 1: Work membership. This is great because I get to go
Speaker 1: back to all my cheesy sales lines that I used
Speaker 1: to give their perspective members. My favorite line I used
Speaker 1: to use was that it's a fortune experience when you're
Speaker 1: not yet a fortune five company. Teddy's customers were mostly
Speaker 1: small businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. For them, getting office space
Speaker 1: was a challenge. Most polices required a commitment of several years.
Speaker 1: We Work offered something different. You could easily rent a
Speaker 1: desk or small office month by month. I think in
Speaker 1: those early days it worked. I loved the idea of
Speaker 1: the facility. I need a conference from great, I can
Speaker 1: walk in and book it. I you know, need a
Speaker 1: desk that's inexpensive and uh is non committal in the
Speaker 1: traditional you know, commercial real estate sense. Um. And also
Speaker 1: I want to be around like minded people. I want
Speaker 1: to be around people who are going through the same
Speaker 1: struggles and going through the same challenges, but also who
Speaker 1: want to celebrate my success. Ron John, who was working
Speaker 1: out of a we Work office in New York, was
Speaker 1: happy to be alongside other startup founders, but more importantly,
Speaker 1: he felt we Worked with selling him something else. It
Speaker 1: was selling him a sense of legitimacy. They delivered a
Speaker 1: great product. The actual space itself. It validated you, especially
Speaker 1: when you're kind of an early stage start up flailing around.
Speaker 1: The space was nice enough that you know, you have
Speaker 1: a meeting, people come in, they think you are doing
Speaker 1: something correct. My parents, who as Indian parents, were very
Speaker 1: nervous about me doing something startup in my thirties. They
Speaker 1: came and they saw and this is when we were
Speaker 1: at the We Work at Broadway, which was on the
Speaker 1: twenty floor, this kind of like gleaming view of the
Speaker 1: financial district. And again they thought we must be doing
Speaker 1: something right, and at the time we weren't. Ron John's
Speaker 1: desk at as We Work office was next to something
Speaker 1: particularly important, the fruit water. It's a big jog of
Speaker 1: drinking water that has fruit cut up into it, kind
Speaker 1: of fancy. So one thing I definitely remember from the
Speaker 1: time was the fruit water. Somehow this kind of became
Speaker 1: a central sales point for the we Work employees and
Speaker 1: even Adam Newman. Anytime their investors in there, or even
Speaker 1: if he was bringing around people to show off the space,
Speaker 1: you could bring them straight to the fruit water, talk
Speaker 1: about it loudly and proclaim, you know, we're in the
Speaker 1: midst of the future of work. And offer the fruit water. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's back up for a minute. Yes, we are
Speaker 1: actually talking about water that has chopped up fruit floating
Speaker 1: in it. Throughout the course of this story, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of silly things that are actually important.
Speaker 1: Fruit water is one of those things. It sounds small,
Speaker 1: but it became a symbol of the we Work brand
Speaker 1: in all their offices around the world, and people got
Speaker 1: really into it. The other day, I was looking it
Speaker 1: up on Twitter and I found a picture where the
Speaker 1: fruit water had cantaloupe in it, cut into the shape
Speaker 1: of dolphins. Cantaloup dolphins. Yeah. Actually, one time, I can
Speaker 1: say I looked up and I was sitting on some
Speaker 1: kind of ball, looked to my left and Elliot Spitzer
Speaker 1: was standing right there, kind of looking over looking across
Speaker 1: the entire entire floor with a smile on his face.
Speaker 1: Elliot Spitzer, for those of you who don't know, is
Speaker 1: the former somewhat disgraced governor of New York and he
Speaker 1: was getting Adam's pitch to investors. Look at this excitement
Speaker 1: and energy. Adam was using We Works paying customers to
Speaker 1: attract more money. It was almost like we were animals.
Speaker 1: In a zoo or rats in a lab, like people
Speaker 1: would just kind of stand on the periphery and watch
Speaker 1: everyone sitting there. So if you are an older investor
Speaker 1: who has no idea what's happening, and suddenly you just
Speaker 1: see young kids and shorts with laptops and uh, and
Speaker 1: your your entire construction of work in your mind forever
Speaker 1: has been suits and offices and cubicles, it would definitely
Speaker 1: feel like maybe the secret is here. And it did
Speaker 1: feel like there was something more here than just the
Speaker 1: desks that was intentional on We Works part. From Robjohn's
Speaker 1: point of view, we Work was doing the same thing
Speaker 1: as a lot of other rapidly growing companies in the tents.
Speaker 1: They weren't just selling a product. They were selling something
Speaker 1: much bigger than that. The desks were good, I mean,
Speaker 1: the product was a very good one, but it had
Speaker 1: to be about so much more and it couldn't just
Speaker 1: be stopped at We're going to sell you a good
Speaker 1: desk in a fun environment like it had to be
Speaker 1: about transforming humanity. You're selling the weed generation and transformational
Speaker 1: future of work and life and the way we interact.
Speaker 1: Uber called itself ride sharing, even though it's just kind
Speaker 1: of a modernized taxi fleet, but they had that community
Speaker 1: word embedded into it. And yeah, Adam was constantly evoking
Speaker 1: community when talking about work. It's that community. Being surrounded
Speaker 1: by a group of like minded individuals, being part of
Speaker 1: something bigger than yourself inspires people to work harder, spend
Speaker 1: more time at work, and just have fun doing it.
Speaker 1: We Work wasn't the only coworking space I was active
Speaker 1: at the time, so it had rivals paying attention to
Speaker 1: how it ran its business. One of those rivals was Industrious.
Speaker 1: It's CEO, Jamie Hodari, noticed a few things about We Work.
Speaker 1: Jamie was confused by we Work because Adam spent more
Speaker 1: time talking about community than he did fast internet or
Speaker 1: clean office space. Jamie had done customer research and found
Speaker 1: that the idea of we wasn't that important to people
Speaker 1: who just wanted to rent a desk. But We Work
Speaker 1: was also expanding so rapidly it had gone from zero
Speaker 1: to a billion dollar valuation in less than four years.
Speaker 1: It left Jamie wondering was we Work onto something that
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to see. One of many ways in
Speaker 1: which I think, as a WE Work competitor, you're stuck
Speaker 1: saying like, do they not really get at it. Is
Speaker 1: it that they are out of touch with what the
Speaker 1: actual nature of rising demand is or the actual reasons
Speaker 1: are that adoption rates are rising of their product, or
Speaker 1: is it that they're on another level. They're seeing around
Speaker 1: the next corner, you know, they're seeing everything we're seeing,
Speaker 1: and then the stuff that comes after that, or the
Speaker 1: stuff that people care about but can't actually articulate or
Speaker 1: put into words. So Jamie was questioning whether people really
Speaker 1: wanted to pay for community for the aspirational, scrappy culture
Speaker 1: that we work was selling. The slogans on its walls
Speaker 1: saying better together, do what you love, always exploring cheers.
Speaker 1: Jamie didn't get why Adam never talked directly about real
Speaker 1: estate or business plans. Instead, he talked about humanity and enlightenment.
Speaker 1: I think that was maybe the first sniff for the
Speaker 1: first moment of saying, this company has a kind of oblique,
Speaker 1: indirect way of approaching things that it wasn't a company
Speaker 1: given to straight talk basically um and that ended up
Speaker 1: becoming a predictor of a lot of things to come.
Speaker 1: Adam wanted to do loftier things. He wanted to transform humanity,
Speaker 1: and in his mind, the first step to that was
Speaker 1: transforming work. He wanted to do it by making work fun.
Speaker 1: It sounds simple, but it was a pretty novel idea
Speaker 1: and he put it into action At We Work. It
Speaker 1: sells fun, I mean it sells excitement. You don't even
Speaker 1: have to go out to a bar club. We will
Speaker 1: bring that all to your office space where you sit
Speaker 1: and do work. It's a pretty good deal. The bar
Speaker 1: is now at your desk. We give free beer in
Speaker 1: all of our buildings. We gave nine glasses of beer
Speaker 1: last month, which is a number we're proud of. People
Speaker 1: are staying late at the office. The parties take place
Speaker 1: at the office itself. It's that co mingling of life
Speaker 1: and work and kind of like lack of division between
Speaker 1: your office and party. You're going out to a bar.
Speaker 1: To create that environment, community managers like Teddy had to
Speaker 1: learn how to do a lot of random manual tasks
Speaker 1: like tapping the beer keg or grabbing a bunch of
Speaker 1: members to film a viral video meme. And for those
Speaker 1: who love to google, if you can find the We
Speaker 1: Work Labs Harlem Shake video, I highly recommend you look
Speaker 1: it up. It's actually pretty fun. Um. I'm the mermaid
Speaker 1: in the bottom right corner, so you can find me.
Speaker 1: I'm right there. But but to me, that was that
Speaker 1: was amazing. That was so much fun. Right. Oh that
Speaker 1: is Oh that's you in the mermaidaid. That's quite a look.
Speaker 1: So I'm wearing a purple shell brod and those are
Speaker 1: real shells. Uh that I had to get custom tailored
Speaker 1: to stay up. Um. I had a custom mermaid skirt um,
Speaker 1: and I am front and center dancing as a mermaid
Speaker 1: while making sure that my shells stay up. Um. You
Speaker 1: asked how I felt. I loved it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was so much fun. We worked at something different. It
Speaker 1: was work, but it was fun, which may have come
Speaker 1: from Adam himself. He has this reputation publicly of being
Speaker 1: out of control, aggressive, a partier, a dealmaker, but he
Speaker 1: was also just entertaining. Here's Jamie again. The impression you
Speaker 1: get when you spend a bit of time with them
Speaker 1: is not just of this kind of tall, brash force
Speaker 1: of nature, but also of someone who seems like he's
Speaker 1: having fun. You know, when you hear these landlords saying,
Speaker 1: we did a WorldWind tour of this city and we
Speaker 1: drink tequila and whatever. You know, maybe the unspoken magnetism
Speaker 1: of it is in part that business isn't often that fun,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's dry, and so spending the day
Speaker 1: with someone who seems like they're on this rocket ship
Speaker 1: and loving every minute of it, that's the most magnetic
Speaker 1: thing of all. This magnetism also pulled in prospective employees.
Speaker 1: When Carl, the community manager in d C, walked into
Speaker 1: a we Work office for his first interview, he had
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it. That was blown away by
Speaker 1: the aesthetics and the the electricity of the room of
Speaker 1: where these people were working. It was just entirely, entirely
Speaker 1: different and very very young, very my generation vibe the
Speaker 1: entire place Carl joined we Work in and he felt
Speaker 1: like he had tumbled into a millennial wonderland. The mid
Speaker 1: century modern everything um. The fact that they had like
Speaker 1: cold brew on tap and all the brands I loved,
Speaker 1: all under one roof. It was just it was overload
Speaker 1: almost um, and it really sold me on the concept.
Speaker 1: We work with a company that celebrated bringing people together,
Speaker 1: and they put that into practice with their own employees.
Speaker 1: Every week, every Monday night, we Work held in all
Speaker 1: hands meeting and it lasted for hours, and it was
Speaker 1: called thank God It's Monday. T g i AM for short.
Speaker 1: Here's Cody Quinn, an early employee. So t g i
Speaker 1: ams were they write that. So they had these company
Speaker 1: what meetings called thank God It's Monday. Um, I literally
Speaker 1: get goose bumps thinking about it, because Mondays were rough.
Speaker 1: Thank God It's Monday was meant to be something fresh
Speaker 1: and different, a celebration about loving your work, but many
Speaker 1: employees seem to hate it and meant staying late at
Speaker 1: work after a long day, often without overtime pay. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of posturing with a lot of like egos.
Speaker 1: People just kind of like peacocking on stage like thank
Speaker 1: God It's Monday. Like they just wanted to be cool
Speaker 1: and like flex their position. And sometimes these meetings turned
Speaker 1: into celebrations for the growing business m seed by Adam.
Speaker 1: Here's Cody again, you know, like after him talking about
Speaker 1: himself for like a half hour, like he's like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're having a party, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: these trays of tequila shots come out and and like
Speaker 1: it's a big party, and like even to the extent
Speaker 1: that there they were encouraging people to get drunk enough
Speaker 1: that they would pay for Uber's home. We Work asn't
Speaker 1: the only company partying like this in the twenty tens.
Speaker 1: If you worked at a art up any time in
Speaker 1: the last decade, maybe some of this sounds familiar to you,
Speaker 1: staying late in the office for mandatory parties, free booze,
Speaker 1: the blurring of life and work. What makes We Work
Speaker 1: special is that they took startup culture to the next level.
Speaker 1: They were actually selling this culture to their customers, and
Speaker 1: We Work found that there was a huge appetite for it.
Speaker 1: The office party that never ends. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: So before the break, we talked about we Works. Thank
Speaker 1: God it's Monday meetings. These all hands meetings are a
Speaker 1: really important aspect of we Works company culture. It's how
Speaker 1: we Work rallied the troops and shared the inside take
Speaker 1: on what was going on at this rapidly growing company.
Speaker 1: Here's Miguel McKelvey warming up the crowd for Adam at
Speaker 1: one of these meetings. Um, it's just as excited as
Speaker 1: I am. And I'm happy to introduce Adam our CEO,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna play for you. Recordings of several of
Speaker 1: these meetings from twenty fifteen and right in the middle
Speaker 1: of we Works rise. These tapes were never meant to
Speaker 1: be heard outside of the company ever, and they captured
Speaker 1: this very intriguing and revealing aspect of we Work, this
Speaker 1: internal raw ra. You'll be hearing snippets throughout the season.
Speaker 1: Hey hey, hey, I know you just to set the scene.
Speaker 1: In these meetings, Adam is usually speaking in front of
Speaker 1: a podium. We Work employees are crowded around him, sitting
Speaker 1: on the floor because it's so packed. In one of
Speaker 1: the videos, he's wearing a black t shirt that says
Speaker 1: creator on it. He's standing in front of a gone
Speaker 1: with we Work engraved on it. There's a lot of room.
Speaker 1: Let's sit a little bit in the back. That's great.
Speaker 1: You can sat next to the gone. There's more seats
Speaker 1: over there. This is a different atom from the yearning
Speaker 1: kids struggling to fit in at the Kibbutz. He's different
Speaker 1: also from the guy trying and failing to innovate high
Speaker 1: heels and baby clothing. He had just been featured in
Speaker 1: Forbes in a splashy spread titled inside the Phenomenal Rise
Speaker 1: of We Work, and now he's on stage surrounded by
Speaker 1: his employees and telecasting two hundreds more. I can't get
Speaker 1: over how he keeps introducing himself. I'm Adam, nice to
Speaker 1: meet you. As if they don't know who he is,
Speaker 1: they work for him. Okay, can everybody hear me? Part
Speaker 1: of what made working at We Worked so intense during
Speaker 1: these years was the company's rapid expansion. Look at some numbers. Now,
Speaker 1: these numbers are are actual numbers, so it is what
Speaker 1: it is. Adam used these growth numbers to get his
Speaker 1: employees excited about what they were accomplishing. Think you look
Speaker 1: one building, four buildings, that means you added three still
Speaker 1: had it on we were sleeping. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: we were doing. We had it only two buildings, were
Speaker 1: going backwards. And then twenty fourteen, which is when in
Speaker 1: which a lot of you came, We went from nine
Speaker 1: buildings to twenty three. Were now at thirty four buildings,
Speaker 1: which means we've already added four new markets with Berkeley, Amsterdam, Chicago,
Speaker 1: and Austin, Texas. The numbers were doubling or tripling year
Speaker 1: by year. Adam told them that what they were doing
Speaker 1: was completely unprecedented. Our physical growth in yrse teen, assuming
Speaker 1: we're just similar to what we're planning or more. It
Speaker 1: is going to be the fastest physical growth in the
Speaker 1: history of the world, at least as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, at least for the past. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about Roman times, and some of those times there might
Speaker 1: have been some very high growth companies there. Okay, so
Speaker 1: here's my read on what he's saying. I think Adam
Speaker 1: is only half kidding here. He's obviously joking about there
Speaker 1: being startups during Roman times, but he's not joking when
Speaker 1: he says that we Work is growing like no one else.
Speaker 1: They were opening up buildings all over the world, even
Speaker 1: though they've only been around for a few years. So
Speaker 1: this video was taped in mid right before I started
Speaker 1: covering we Work. At the time, they were seen as
Speaker 1: this hot, rising startup. The company was valued at ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Most of the media coverage marveled at how
Speaker 1: fast they were growing, how much money they'd raised, and
Speaker 1: they asked a few questions about whether it was really
Speaker 1: all it was hyped up to be, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: much criticism out there. When I started watching these videos
Speaker 1: of all hands meetings, it was the first time that
Speaker 1: I got to hear what Adam was like inside the office,
Speaker 1: what he told his employees, and not what he told
Speaker 1: reporters or the public, And it was really different from
Speaker 1: the shiny, polished narrative that we were put out there.
Speaker 1: In the tape, you hear Adam say things that are
Speaker 1: pretty revealing. Here he is addressing new hires gathered at
Speaker 1: the meeting. You guys are about to find out. We're
Speaker 1: really nice to give him the first thirty days. The
Speaker 1: second thirty days were made by day six. You on,
Speaker 1: you'll know our truth. You'll know our truth. What strikes
Speaker 1: me here is how Adam is saying something weirdly ominous
Speaker 1: to his employees. It's kind of joking, but it's also
Speaker 1: clearly not a joke. I feel like I should take
Speaker 1: a moment here and tell you how I got these tapes.
Speaker 1: They were given to me by an employee. She was
Speaker 1: upset about how we Work was operating, and after she
Speaker 1: shared the recordings, we Work turned around and sued her.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting story. You'll hear it all in full
Speaker 1: later in the series. One of the most fun things
Speaker 1: is when you see a new employee and you know
Speaker 1: two things. One they have no clue what they got
Speaker 1: themselves into. That's a fact. Whatever they think they know,
Speaker 1: whatever their friends told them, whatever you told them, they
Speaker 1: don't know. And don't matter how much you're gonna tell them.
Speaker 1: They won't know. They won't know until they did the
Speaker 1: first all night, or they won't know until they did
Speaker 1: the first summit. They won't know until they did the
Speaker 1: first summer camp. But until you get to experience all
Speaker 1: of that, you don't know. I started talking to a
Speaker 1: lot of current and former we Work employees. I wanted
Speaker 1: to understand the company better, and many of them told
Speaker 1: me about that withline that Adam was just describing, Their
Speaker 1: first few months on the job were a shock. Things
Speaker 1: were much more frantic than it seemed from the outside.
Speaker 1: This incredible growth, growth that Adam compared to Roman times,
Speaker 1: meant that internally it was chaos. Here's Teddy again. We
Speaker 1: opened up a building in New York down in Soho. Um.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a functioning bathroom on the first day.
Speaker 1: Um so I had to go down the block to
Speaker 1: a local coffee shop and buy out all of their
Speaker 1: pastries and told them that if someone came in with
Speaker 1: a wee Work keycard that they would be able to
Speaker 1: use the bathroom. There's the saying you you know you've
Speaker 1: got three options fast, cheap, and right, but you only
Speaker 1: get to pick two. What are you gonna pick? You know,
Speaker 1: when we work, it was always fast and cheap. I
Speaker 1: know it sounds crazy to open an office with no bathroom,
Speaker 1: but there were so many more stories like this. When
Speaker 1: we opened up our first building in DC, we didn't
Speaker 1: have coffee machines. So on Super Bowl Sunday we were
Speaker 1: opening up the day after Super Bowl Sunday, I had
Speaker 1: to go to Costco and bought four Mr Coffee, you know,
Speaker 1: personal coffee machines, and we were on and four at
Speaker 1: a time, blowing the breaker all morning, having to reset
Speaker 1: the electricity for it towards it um, but that's what
Speaker 1: you had to do. Then there was a time when
Speaker 1: we work was about to open a building in Berkeley.
Speaker 1: There was one wrinkle. They had installed a front door
Speaker 1: that wasn't accessible to people with disabilities. So, uh, we
Speaker 1: evaluated and looked at it, and we determined that it
Speaker 1: was better to have no door than to have a
Speaker 1: non compliant door. So for about three days after we
Speaker 1: opened up that location in Berkeley in January of two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen we had a literally no door on
Speaker 1: the building with cold East Bay air blowing through, and
Speaker 1: I had to hire seven security until we could get
Speaker 1: the door fixed. These screw ups made we were customers unhappy,
Speaker 1: but Teddy said that the way to fix it was
Speaker 1: to offer them free brunch, a nice happy hour, or
Speaker 1: a discount on rent. Another community manager, Carl, had to
Speaker 1: deal with this too. You heard from him earlier. Building
Speaker 1: launches were the most stressful because paint was still drying
Speaker 1: when people moved in, and it was that under shut.
Speaker 1: In Miami Beach, one of the offices failed inspection on
Speaker 1: the morning it was supposed to open, leaving members ready
Speaker 1: to move in stranded. And you have people who paid
Speaker 1: money showing up with boxes of things to move into
Speaker 1: their new office that were told they cannot go into
Speaker 1: that building. So we work, over the course of forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, had to build a makeshift office across the
Speaker 1: street at this empty like commercial building. Paint it, make
Speaker 1: it look cool, give it a we worked vibe, get
Speaker 1: internet set up, get all these things set up, and
Speaker 1: they pulled it off. It blows my mind like they
Speaker 1: totally pulled it off. In d C where Carl worked,
Speaker 1: we Worke didn't have a liquor license for the free
Speaker 1: beer it was giving out. Carl tried to fix it.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what license to apply for. Am
Speaker 1: I a tavern? The hell's a tavern. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: Carl is twenty six trying to figure out permits to
Speaker 1: satisfy some arcane municipal law and he doesn't quite nail it.
Speaker 1: Carl is convinced that someone tipped off the cops. So
Speaker 1: I remember we actually had a rate happened at all
Speaker 1: of our offices where it was almost like swat style
Speaker 1: where all these cops are pouring in, like where's the alcohol?
Speaker 1: Where is the alcohol? And like that keg over there.
Speaker 1: It's like in this beautiful marble center thing that's right
Speaker 1: over there, and they were like where's the other And
Speaker 1: it was you know, I had my community managers calling
Speaker 1: me freaking out, like dude, cops are here to Carl,
Speaker 1: like what's going on. Carl was a city level manager
Speaker 1: for we Works Community Team, a department name that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of vague, but that's also pretty common at big startups.
Speaker 1: Community workers are on the front lines. They manage WE
Speaker 1: Worked buildings. They're the ones who dealt with disasters. They
Speaker 1: were the first people you saw when you walked into
Speaker 1: a We were some sat at the front desk. They
Speaker 1: gave tours and sold new memberships, tapped the kegs, fixed
Speaker 1: the printer, handled anything that came up. Really. They also
Speaker 1: hosted events in the buildings that often meant really long hours.
Speaker 1: They were usually the first ones into the building and
Speaker 1: the last ones out, so then you'd have to host
Speaker 1: a party or host an event, host the lecture, host
Speaker 1: something in the space. So you know, before you know it,
Speaker 1: you got up at seven am, got to worked by eight,
Speaker 1: and then you're leaving work at ten just to start
Speaker 1: it all her again. And you would do that. We
Speaker 1: would do that for weeks, weeks, months, um. More often
Speaker 1: than not. We were just dealing with problems and members
Speaker 1: coming up to us and complaining. Carl said the job
Speaker 1: was tough, especially for his younger employees who got blamed
Speaker 1: for the work frustrations of their customers, like it is
Speaker 1: somehow your problem, you did something wrong. The temperature in
Speaker 1: this office is why they'd enclose that deal. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to tell a twenty three or four
Speaker 1: year old that this guy who's spitting in your face,
Speaker 1: so angry about a bad print job, and it is
Speaker 1: not your problem and not your fault. We said. The
Speaker 1: community employees were young, but so were a lot of
Speaker 1: the customers, or at least they acted like it. Carl
Speaker 1: really learned a lot about humanity on this job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, you know the crazy parts that have these
Speaker 1: office birthdays and just leave the cake out for like days,
Speaker 1: just like cake, an open air cake. So yeah, mice everywhere.
Speaker 1: It was like it was the thing. It was like,
Speaker 1: I've gotten to the point where I can tell you
Speaker 1: the perfect bait to use to get mice. I can
Speaker 1: tell you the right traps to use. I can tell
Speaker 1: you the right corners to use, what time of night
Speaker 1: they usually like, move around. Um, it's crazy. Keep in
Speaker 1: mind a lot of these employees are recent college grounds,
Speaker 1: some of whom are in their first jobs, and they've
Speaker 1: been hired by this very exciting startup and they're learning
Speaker 1: how to trap mice. The first go around, we use
Speaker 1: glue traps. Horrific. Don't ever use those. They're all these
Speaker 1: screaming mice. So we're trying to get off the trap.
Speaker 1: You couldn't take them off that ripping their skin off
Speaker 1: in every every woman in the building, They're all like screw,
Speaker 1: Like I had to do something because that's to put
Speaker 1: them out their miseries. I basically it was either I
Speaker 1: killed them myself right threw them in the trash can.
Speaker 1: But it was like sticky pads of mice screaming, which
Speaker 1: is horrifying. Members also brought in their dogs. Part of
Speaker 1: the beauty of we work was you can bring your
Speaker 1: dog to work, so adorable and so amazing. But one
Speaker 1: of our buildings, that Wonderbread, Uh, they let too many
Speaker 1: of the dogs off leash and they became like their
Speaker 1: own pack of roving roving like wool. They just ran
Speaker 1: around and it was like one dog was like the
Speaker 1: alpha and all the dogs just like follow. It was
Speaker 1: just so crazy, and we got so many complaints. Everyone's like,
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on the hallways because you
Speaker 1: all you heard was like one dog would start sprinting
Speaker 1: in like a whole pack of dogs that would follow.
Speaker 1: Sometimes their job included dealing with party leftovers. We had
Speaker 1: so many parties where you know, I think in the
Speaker 1: entire time, three times I found like a condom rapper
Speaker 1: or econom in a gross place, like one in the
Speaker 1: phone booth, you know, one in the meditation room. So
Speaker 1: that's the reason the meditation was at a door, just
Speaker 1: gotta I can't trust people behind closed doors. So yeah,
Speaker 1: disgusting people are awful, awful, awful. So what did Carl
Speaker 1: do the first time he saw a used condom? The
Speaker 1: first time? I gagged? Well, and then I took a
Speaker 1: photo and I sected it to my team and like
Speaker 1: with the words WTF. And then it turns his whole
Speaker 1: chat like, oh my god, what did you find out?
Speaker 1: And then it's just a guessing game and then of
Speaker 1: who it was, and then me going through recordings from
Speaker 1: I figure out who was to have a super awkward
Speaker 1: chat with a member. Sadly, Carl couldn't figure out the
Speaker 1: condom culprit and he didn't want to leave his staff
Speaker 1: to deal with it, so he did what he thought
Speaker 1: a leader should do. So I put on a glove,
Speaker 1: looked away, picked it up, through it in trash. Disgusting,
Speaker 1: gross gross gross gross. And it wasn't just condoms. There
Speaker 1: was one other unfortunate party favor Oh yeah, parties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people vomited and with the weirdest places. Um, some guys
Speaker 1: just can't women got women and women can't hold their
Speaker 1: booze and the you know, the good thing at a
Speaker 1: phone booth and they turned dark when you close the door,
Speaker 1: so you open it, you vomit, You close it, and
Speaker 1: nobody will find it until they open it again. So
Speaker 1: so yes, if your CEO is bragging about serving ninety
Speaker 1: beers a month, you might witness some of the side
Speaker 1: effects of heavy drinking. But that's what's funny about Carl.
Speaker 1: Even though he had to deal with the disgusting aftermath,
Speaker 1: he still thinks that beer is part of what made
Speaker 1: we work special and attractive. I mean, obviously a lot
Speaker 1: of these things wouldn't have happened about the parties, but
Speaker 1: the parties kind of kept the momentum of the space going.
Speaker 1: I see a lot of new coworking spaces now they're like,
Speaker 1: this is coworking space for adults and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: but they're just not as fun. Say what you will
Speaker 1: about with a drinking culture, which definitely got out of
Speaker 1: hand many times. Um, it was the only place doing it,
Speaker 1: and it was wild and it was fun and it
Speaker 1: kept people talking. So Carl defended a lot of aspects
Speaker 1: of the job, even though it sometimes made him miserable.
Speaker 1: Everybody at we work, I don't care what position they were,
Speaker 1: had a moment where they felt like crying. So many
Speaker 1: of Carl's employees cried at work that he developed a
Speaker 1: standard line of advice for them. So rather than lose
Speaker 1: employees or have them completely freak out in front of
Speaker 1: a member, I always tell employees, hey, listen, like, if
Speaker 1: you ever have that moment, grab somebody who will cover
Speaker 1: the desk for you, and just go take as long
Speaker 1: of a walk as you need. And he had advice
Speaker 1: on where to cry too, Well, if you're building was
Speaker 1: sold out, you can find an empty office, it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Usually supply is were okay. Where wherever you can. Just
Speaker 1: don't do it for the members. And if you need
Speaker 1: talk to someone, talk to somebody in your team, or
Speaker 1: talk to me. That was the rule. And during this
Speaker 1: whole period, actually I remember a lot of former employees
Speaker 1: talking to me about this feeling of chaos. How we
Speaker 1: work seemed from the outside like this rocket ship destined
Speaker 1: for the moon, but on the inside it was growing
Speaker 1: so quickly that you couldn't keep up. It was basically
Speaker 1: just smile through the tears. Actually, this was one of
Speaker 1: my first big breakthroughs in reporting on We Work again.
Speaker 1: At the time, almost all the press coverage of we
Speaker 1: Work was so positive, but I kept finding employees who
Speaker 1: were burnt out and frustrated and also feeling betrayed. They've
Speaker 1: been told so many positive things by their employer about
Speaker 1: doing what you love, only to find that working there
Speaker 1: was a disheartening experience. As I talked to them, I
Speaker 1: kept learning more and more about how they felt wronged
Speaker 1: and mistreated by We Work. It was one of the
Speaker 1: first hints to me that there was something off. I
Speaker 1: kept thinking that it can't be this successful of a
Speaker 1: company if its employees are so unhappy. Right, that's next
Speaker 1: time on Foundering. Foundering is hosted by me Ellen Hewitt.
Speaker 1: Sean When is our executive producer. My Aquava is our
Speaker 1: associate producer. Raimondo mixed the show today. Magnus Hendrickson helped
Speaker 1: us with recordings. Mark Million and Vandermay and Alistair Barr
Speaker 1: are our story editors. Francesco Levi is the head of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and if you like
Speaker 1: our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your friends
Speaker 1: see you next time.