Workers of the World, Unite: 38% of Gen Z Wants a Safe Space in the Office 'for Hookups and Solo Play'
"In the factories and mills, in the shipyards and mines,
We've often been told to keep up with the times,
For our skills are not needed, they've streamlined the job,
And with slide rule and stopwatch, our pride they have robbed."
-Dropkick Murphy's, The Worker's Song
Since long before the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century, the struggle between workers and those who control the wealth has been one of the great dynamics of history. As the Martin Sheen character puts it in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, "The only difference between the men who built the Pyramids and the ones who built The Empire State Building is unions."
And that can be said, not just of legally organized workers, but all laborers throughout time. From the work houses Charles Dickens wrote about. The food processing plants in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. I just learned about Teddy Roosevelt was a New York State Assemblyman who personally toured the tenements where entire families worked rolling cigars in their squalid, polluted homes, and voted to ban the practice. And when I was down in DC a couple of weeks ago:
... I toured the National Archives, which included a photo exhibit of Appalachian coal miners and the deplorable, unsafe, deadly environments they worked and lived in. How they were required to buy everything for their families from the company store. Meaning the mine owners made back everything they paid their employees. Until the President seized control of the mines to stop these practices. Which President? Lincoln? McKinley? Teddy Roosevelt?
No. It was Truman. In the 1950s. That's how far into recent history we allowed people to live in squalor in order to feed their families.
Which brings us to the modern day. Yes, we a can of Alpha-Bits of government agencies making sure all workers are protected while in the workplace. OSHA. NIOSH. MSHA. EPA. FMLA. We've got a 40-hour work week. Child labor laws. Minimum wages.
But we haven't had the one thing that today's young adults entering the labor force truly desire.
A place in the office to get laid. Or, in the alternative, to whack off.
And now Gen Z is demanding something be done about it:
Source - For Gen Z, the switch to remote working isn’t just a lifestyle shift; it’s a sexual revolution. Whether it benefits or harms productivity is still hotly debated, but one thing’s clear: remote working is working wonders for young employees’ sex lives. They’re swapping the morning commute for morning cuddles, and lunch breaks have become an opportunity to swap boring meetings for the bedroom – but not all remote employees are so turned on.
EduBirdie surveyed 2,000 Gen Z on whether working from home has sparked more romance or killed the mood in their sex lives. The results show that while many love their newfound flexibility, others miss the buzz of the office and the opportunity for connection. …
Gen Zers have fallen for remote working, and if employers want to attract them back to the office, they’ll need to offer more than free coffee and ping-pong tables. The first base? Letting go of prudish attitudes and embracing the sex-positive mindset that the young generation is into.
In fact, 38% of Gen Zers admit they wish their workplace had a private space for hookups or solo play – allowing them to “take a break”, alone or with a colleague, whenever they desire.
Remote work has shaken up the workplace and the bedroom – and Gen Z is loving it. If employers want them back in the building? They’ll have to make space not just for meetings but… meaningful connections. If they can’t have sex at home, they want to have sex at work instead.
There you have it. The key to productivity and making the US the economic envy of the world it once was isn't requiring workers to come back to the downtown office space their company is paying exorbitant rent for. It's not about more pay. Or shorter hours. A 401K. A better health plan. Room for advancement. It's certainly not about Taco Tuesday and Casual Fridays and Pizza Parties.
All it takes is for you to use up a few hundred square feet of that expensive real estate to provide them with a sex dungeon. What back in the day used to be called A Stabbin' Cabin. A Boom-Boom Room. What exactly it would entail, I have no idea. I mean, I'm old enough to have worked in an office in the 1990s that had a smoking room. Looking back, it was pretty grotesque. The glass from the top of the wall to the ceiling was more or less the color of root beer. And you probably couldn't have stood int there for two minutes without your whole being smelling like the breath of the sad, lonely drunks who sit at the bar in Chinese restaurants playing Keno. But there the rules were simple. If you wanted to rip a lung dart, go on in, close the door, and be their guest.
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But how does a "private space for hookups and solo play" even work? Do you sign out the room ahead of time, like when your department wants to throw a birthday party? Or is it just - pardon the sexual pun but there's not stepping around it - "Come one, come all?" Does the guy who's reduced to "solo play" get to sit there and watch the "hookups"? If not, he'll probably find some rule in the HR rules that says he's allowed to. And trying to stop him is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
What's the furniture in there even like? Is it just a sofa you order from the office supply company? A futon? Is it a "The couch pulls out, but I don't" situation? Because I imagine whatever is it, someone's going to complain you don't have what they like. Deb from Accounts Payable files a complaint because you don't have the kind of sex swing she likes. And Chuck from Benefits brings in his bondage equipment but someone keeps using his ballgag even though he clearly put his name on it. And don't get me started on keeping the place clean. You can't get a living soul in an office to quit exploding their soup all over the inside of the microwave or stop putting two fluid ounces of coffee back on the burner. What's it going to be like when that's not soup exploding all over everything an those two fluid ounces aren't coffee? Under blacklight every surface of that place would look like a Jackson Pollack painting.
Again, I'm old school. If we wanted to hookup with a coworker, we had to find time to be around them, be charming and funny, make them like us, get them to come out for drinks after work and hopefully bed them. All without violating some policy, making it awkward at work, or having everyone in the place know your personal business. And somehow we managed.
You Gen Zs already have it made. You can spent all day sexting. Flirting with the hot chick from Marketing who does the Sexy Librarian look for you and describes what she's got going on underneath it. You can plan with precision where and when you're going to hook up after work or even one your lunch break if you're creative enough. Hell, she can send you nudes while you're at your workspace and no one's any the wiser. And if she's particularly good, you can go jack it in the men's room stall. All while meeting your performance goals and earning your next raise.
All these things were impossible when I was in my 20s working in an analog world. If none of that is good enough for you, there is no hope for the American working man. None whatsoever. We're doomed to watch our empire crumble. So suck it up, 38%. Your employer owes it to you that you don't die on the job and that you get paid what you're worth. Earlier generations didn't fight and sacrifice to earn you that life just to get you laid on company time.