Beyond The Cubicle was a major success. Thanks to everyone who came out this past Thursday and a special thank you to all of our co-hosts and sponsors! For those of you who are not familiar with Beyond The Cubicle, we at Chicago Roof Deck + Garden hosted a one-night event along with other experts focussed on improving office wellness in an effort to open up the conversation about what we all can do to take our 9-5 experiences to the next level. Not only was it a lot of fun, but I can sincerely say I learned a lot and met a lot of great people doing remarkable things.
I must admit though, I was a bit anxious the morning of the event as rain continued to fall. Thankfully, around 2:00pm, the rain finally gave up, the clouds relented and the sun decide to join the party! Ironically this all had little consequence as much of the party congregated in our newest addition to our office inside.
THE SCENE
Private Chef, Ryan Silver, of Food by Silver smoked 99 pounds of brisket to feed our guests. When I asked him why 99 pounds, Ryan said, ‘Well, based on the number of people we expected, I ordered 90 pounds and somehow we ended up receiving 99 pounds. Usually 9 pounds of extra meet makes me happy, but in this case, if I knew that was going to be the case, I definitely would have just gone for the full 100.’ I guess it depends how you look at things… is the brisket 99% full or 1% empty?
Crafty provided a variety of craft beer options on tap, and the team over at Officeluv concocted a cocktail in their signature blue color palette which everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy.
Cubii brought one of their products for guests to try out and were on site to answer questions and tell us more about what exciting things they had going on including some new products in development.
Gil Melott had a spot set up in the back area as well with some cool artwork displayed as well as an interactive wall allowing for guests to express what they saw in the artwork.
Lastly, Carolyn Ascher of Amlings Interior Landscapes really brought the ‘life’ to the party with hundreds of small Air-Plants which guests got to take home with them at the end of the evening.
THE RESULTS
For those of you who were unable to attend: First off, your loss! Just kidding… but seriously. Secondly, we asked everyone who did attend to complete a questionnaire throughout the evening as they made their way through the different spaces of the party. Upon leaving, they submitted their questionnaires in exchange for a pretty killer grab-bag (like I said, your loss if you didn’t attend). After going through all of the questionnaires, we have decided it would be fun to share some interesting findings with our followers, guests, and invitees. Enjoy!
77.42% of our guests would rather sit next to the loud talker than the stinky bathroom.
87.1% would rather not drink coffee for a year than have to deal with 1999 internet speed for a year
53% to 47% in favor of a 90 minute commute to an office with a great view over a 5 minute commute to an office in a dark basement alone.
68% of you would rather spend a weekend alone with Dwight than Kevin… This still boggles my mind.
When asked if you would prefer to have beer, wine, or coffee on tap at your office, 30% said beer; 35% said wine, and 35% said coffee.
When asked how many miles you thought you could peddle on the cubii in a day, most people said 5 miles, while there was an average of 9.5 miles (due to some perhaps overly ambitious answers of 100 miles) A for effort guys.
No surprises here, the most popular office character is Jim Halpert
It was split between people that go out to lunch and people who bring their lunch to work.
When asked if your office was a place that you could relax, 55.17% said no, 3.44% said ‘meh’, 41% said yes… which leads us into our next question…
What amenity would you most want in your office? While we received many different answers, almost all of them had something to do with a space to relax either indoor or outdoor (roof deck gardens to nap pods).
My personal take away of the day, people want to work in an environment that is relaxing and restorative. Identifying what that means to your specific team is imperative to a happy and productive workforce.
Thanks again to everyone who came and participated!