It takes a trip to IKEA for me to come out of the closet and make a Statement (more to myself than to anyone else) that yes, I am an indie, hippie sort, and that is how I will stay, thank you very much. :)
Because whilst a good number of people would want to have gloriously large offices, walnut desks, comfortable leather chairs, deep furnishings and glamorous fittings after having successfully climbed the corporate ladder, all I want is this.
A loft bed with my own cosy workspace right beneath. From IKEA. Very Scandinavian. Very clean lines. Very cosy. Very cocooning. It is a set up where I can put my water pot on top of the shelf with its coffee sticks and cups by the side. It is a set up that can have files, papers, stationery, notebooks, more files, more papers, cork boards, and all paraphernalia of the office slotted within arm's length.
Is there space for a rug? Yes.
Is there space for personal books? Yes
Is there space for reference books? Yes, yes, yes.
There is space for a couple of clothes and jackets and necessary shoes. Heck, there is even space for a couple of travel sized toiletries. And as long as everyone watches their head when they stand up, there is even space for those kind of meetings where everyone is allowed to sprawl on the floor, scribble and then stash papers around.
Meetings have to be held over a table, said no one ever.
But why I say I'd need to climb the corporate ladder for this is simply because there is hardly a corporation who would permit such a furnishing in an office setting.
Unless I'm in an industry where anything goes, or if I'm high enough in the hierarchy where I can at least have the space to argue my point away with accountability partners, shareholders and the like.
It's a very peculiar thing.
Tell someone that you want to put a very luxurious piece of furniture- an armchair or something- in your office and they'll nod away with understanding. Like, sure, no problem, it fits into the status and the decor, by all means, go and get it, sure, you deserve it.
But tell someone that you want to put a neat, millennial-looking, creative piece of furniture like this to replace the desk in your office and they'll all hem and haw whilst looking at you like you've lost your mind.
And if you insist, they'll go like, but it's not proper. It's not appropriate that you have a bed in your office when you're supposed to be there to work. It's not appropriate that there should be a bed in the office when the place is meant for you to slog your brains out.
With all due respect to corporate culture and company image and everything, I find that standard a strange one to adhere to.
Especially if it has no bearing on the company shares or company image whatsoever.
Let me say first that I have full respect for corporate culture and a fuller respect for company branding and image. Without these two, there's no structure. Without these two, everything that a company stands for goes to bust, because image, culture, style and representation are critical to the perception of the company.
But I happen to work in the creative industry.
It is an industry where generally anything goes as long as problems are solved and s*** gets done. It is an industry that permits bombastic ideas aka desperate solutions because there are serious timelines to be met, there are photo-realistic renders to be done, and there are audiences hungering to be entertained.
But it is also an industry where structure exists for the sake of speed, and occasionally, harmony. And despite being permitted the anything-goes part, much is heavily organized, regimented and controlled. If you thought that this was an industry where you could freely express yourself and thereby go to extremes, you'd soon find out that creativity is permitted only because you gotta do better and faster than your d*** competitor.
Where does the loft bed come in then?
What does the loft bed got to do with all of these?
It means that whilst perspectives and perceptions are a standard to be adhered to, depending on the outcome, they can be challenged, modified, and sometimes, disrupted.
I'm not talking about the #metoo campaign. That is another tale altogether. I'm talking about the facets that facilitate decision making and quality of performance. There is nothing wrong with flamboyance. There is nothing wrong with a bit of rebelliousness just so long as the numbers don't fall, so long as no one, male or female, gets stripped of dignity and sense of self, and so long as it can be well justified.
That's how the great guys did it.
They broke barriers.
They challenged the current statuses of the norms.
They put forth ideas and they went ahead and got them out there in the market regardless whether audiences were ready for it or not, and they doggedly did it again and again and again until they got it right. Mistakes were made, oh definitely, even laughable ones, but they got those mistakes monetized anyway.
There's no absolution that work doesn't get done if there's a loft bed in there. There's no certainty that decisions don't get made in a clear, logical, decisive way simply because the mattress is above my head and the coffee pot is on the shelf by my ear.
And neither does it mean that someone with a hippie, indie streak in him or her is too flippant, too casual, too playful and too dreamy to live and work in an industry that refers to the dollars in millions and the customer pool in billions.
Because even if you tried to, the industry won't permit you anyway. :D