I wish that when I’d posted about mistaking Seattle’s “breathing rooms” as safe places to go when you’re trying to avoid a mental health crisis that I’d yet read the Sarah Holder piece on open-plan offices adding “pods” for privacy, although I’m loathe to link it because in the early going it quotes a little too much Dilbert, and any Dilbert is too much Dilbert.
Coincidentally, on the matter of having mistaken Seattle’s protection from wildfire smoke for something more psychological, the “pods” piece effectively has something to say.
But unlike the anechoic chamber, or a closed-door office, or even workers’ own living rooms, pods aren’t isolated enough to encourage a free-for-all. Prompted by a tweet asking people to share experiences about this bespoke furniture setup, one journalist helpfully clarified that pods are more like “crying rooms.” When pressed, though, no one said they’d actually turned to pods if they (like almost half of Americans in a recent survey) were on the verge of crying at work. Mothers’ nursing rooms, stairwells, bathrooms, and the good old-fashioned outside stoop were cited as better options.
At my last job, the one I got through Vocational Rehabilitation after my autism diagnosis, which was essentially an open-plan workshop/office combination, and which sent me into regular sobbing fits, my “crying room” was the men’s bathroom (or, occasionally, simply the walk to the bus).
“Most of [the pods] are entirely see-through,” Holder writes, “and few are completely sound-proof, in the noise-cancelling sense of the word.” So, yeah, definitely neither “crying room” nor “breathing space”.