"Bring Your Kids to Work Day" on the 58th floor of the World Trade Center North Tower, April 1974

42 comments

Damn this looks depressing
- Still better than today’s industrial chicken coop that’s called an open floor plan office. At least you had privacy with those cubicles.
  
  Now, it's been years since I wasn't WFH, but I've had an office, a cube, a right to park in a dying office's flexspace cube, and occasionally worked in bullpen open-plan stuff. That's also the order of preference: WFH, office, assigned cube (unless yours sucks), flex cube, punching yourself in the face, "open" plan.
  Let's take the last vestige of personal space or signifier that your job is anything other than a knowledge worker assembly line and do away with it in the name of "collaboration." You will have no place for your red stapler or "Do it for Her" note, and you will be forced to do your work, which may be sensitive or may involve some trial and error, as well as putting any down-time you choose to take, on display for every asshole in the office who knows nothing about your productivity (as dangerous for the dedicated or ambitious as it is for the slacker). I didn't even like it when it was complete strangers at a coworking space.
  
  I work in one of those. I hate that my co-workers can see me scratch every itch and hear every stomach rumble.
- I'll take it over women being almost universally assigned to the kitchen, whether they like it or not. Today's being your kids to work day was once called bring your daughter to work day, in an effort to get women in the workplace. I'm all for furthering our work culture change (without going full antiwork) but at least this is a step in the right direction to show that women can be more than a housewife.

I hope this place burns to the ground
"Dad! Don't say that! What if it actually happened!?"

Wow, an analog phone and not a single computer in sight. As a guy who works in IT , this is a beautiful sight to see.
- I'm now 25 years into my IT career and the older I get the more I understand those former co-workers who retired and just wanted to fuck off, go fishing, and never look at another computer.
- As an engineer seeing a drafting table behind him fills me with dread.
- Really? As a fellow keyboard monkey it scares the shit out of me!
  
  A simpler time where every god damn thing wasn't computerized and generating metrics to track every aspect of your life.
- As a guy who works in IT , this is a beautiful sight to see.
  It certainly makes your life a lot easier if the employees don't have any computers!
- I don't get it, what they were doing at their desks then? Like, pratically?

At first I hated it. But now I love it. He seems a pillar of strength in a working dad kind of way. She seems like she's trying really hard to understand what this boring job entails. All around the accoutrements of early 1970s office life in an iconic yet doomed skyscraper. A beautiful moment captured.