The Carpool CEO: Your Office Is Beautiful. But Can You Actually Work There?

I don't have the luxury of choosing a beautiful workplace over a productive one. I have a company to run.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, particularly after a member of our sales team toured a competing coworking space. The space was beautiful. Gorgeous marble countertops, polished concrete floors, sophisticated furniture, and carefully curated finishes. The kind of place that looks incredible in photographs. The kind of place you'd be excited to show someone.

But when we started talking about what it would actually be like to spend eight hours working there, I had a lot of questions.

Where would I sit if I needed to concentrate for three hours? What if I had six calls in one day? Would I want to spend an afternoon working at a marble countertop? How comfortable would I be in a chair with metal armrests? And perhaps most importantly, what would that room sound like? Marble countertops, concrete floors, and other hard surfaces reflect sound. Add a room full of people on calls, and suddenly that gorgeous space might not be such a great place to get work done.

I'm sure it's a wonderful place to have coffee. But I'm not paying for a coworking membership to have coffee. I don’t have that luxury.

Is this a generational thing? I found myself wondering whether I'm just getting old. I'm a working mom with two kids, a company to run, and a calendar that rarely has much breathing room. My workday is often sandwiched between school drop-offs, meetings, sports practices, and whatever else life throws at me. I don’t even think twice when I connect to my starlink in my car and take a zoom from the front seat (parked, of course).

When I sit down to work, I need to work.

I don't want to spend time looking for a spot to take a call. I don't want to relocate three times because the space that looked comfortable turns out to be distracting. And I definitely don't want to leave with a sore back because the furniture was selected for its aesthetic rather than its ergonomics.

Maybe someone earlier in their career values a different experience. Maybe a beautiful, hospitality-inspired workplace is part of how they want to feel about going to work. I can understand that. The environment we're in absolutely affects how we feel. But, are we making assumptions about what younger workers actually want? Do they really value beauty over productivity? Or have we simply gotten very good at marketing beautiful spaces to them?

And is this even about age? Are we designing for the tour or the workday? A beautiful space is easy to sell. You walk in, see the gorgeous finishes, the designer furniture, the perfect lighting, and immediately think, I want to work here. But what happens at hour six?

What happens when you've been sitting in that beautiful chair all morning? When three people around you are on Zoom calls? When you need to focus on something complicated and every sound in the room seems to be competing for your attention?

The experience of touring a workspace and the experience of actually working in one are two very different things. And I worry that our industry sometimes puts too much emphasis on the first. We've borrowed heavily from hospitality, which makes sense. Nobody wants to work in a depressing office. Beautiful environments can make people feel welcome, inspired, and excited to show up.

But a coworking space isn't a hotel lobby. People aren't just passing through. They're trying to accomplish something. Good design isn't always the design you notice.

At Workbar, we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about how people actually work. That's why we have different neighborhoods for different activities. Quiet spaces for focused work. Collaborative spaces where conversation is encouraged. Areas specifically designed for phone calls.

It's why I care about acoustics, furniture, lighting, and how sound travels through a room. None of those things are particularly exciting to photograph. Nobody posts an Instagram picture celebrating the acoustic treatment in the ceiling. But those details make an enormous difference to someone trying to get through a productive workday.

After years of operating coworking spaces, I’ve learned that people don't always work the way they think they will. We have members who pay for private offices and spend much of their day working in our shared neighborhoods. Not because their offices aren't nice, but because different tasks require different environments. And you can’t replicate the cognitive boost that comes from looking at something other than the same four walls.

Sometimes you need quiet. Sometimes you need energy. Sometimes you need a place to take a call without feeling isolated behind a closed door. A good workplace gives you those choices.

The view from the carpool line.

Being a working parent has fundamentally shaped how I think about workplace design. My days have hard stops. There's a pickup time. A practice. An appointment. Someone who needs to be somewhere, usually at exactly the same time I need to be somewhere else.

I can't always extend my workday because I wasn't productive during the hours I had. And I know I'm not alone. Plenty of people, parents or not, have competing demands on their time. So when I think about the value of a workspace, I'm not thinking about whether it makes me feel successful when I walk through the door. I'm thinking about whether it helps me be successful when I walk back out.

Did I get my work done? Was I comfortable? Could I concentrate? Could I move between different types of work without friction? Did the space make my day easier or harder?

Beauty should be the bonus, not the business model.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for ugly offices. I love beautiful design. I want Workbar to be beautiful. I want our members to feel proud to bring clients and colleagues into our spaces.

But beauty and productivity shouldn't be competing priorities. And if they ever are, I know which one wins. The best workplace isn't necessarily the one that makes the biggest impression in the first five minutes. It's the one that still works for you five hours later.

Maybe that's a generational perspective. Maybe it's a working-parent perspective. Or maybe it's simply the perspective of someone who has spent enough time in offices to know that beautiful furniture doesn't get the work done.