Link courtesy kottke.org: The Salt Lake Tribune ran a story in May about the Pixar film studio, where creativity runs rampant and the bathrooms are all in one central spot.
[CEO Steve Jobs] thought it was really important that there only be one bathroom in the building, for all 700 people who work here,” Greenberg says.
Here’s the “bathroom effect” theory, as Greenberg explains it: “If you have bathrooms that are scattered throughout the building, you use the bathroom nearest to where you’re sitting. If there was one bathroom, all kinds of people would come together and talk with one another all the time — you’d meet different people if you were waiting in line. It would enhance communication, and you’d be talking about things outside of work.”
Mercifully for the bladders of Pixar’s caffeine-addicted staffers, the central atrium has eight restrooms on two floors — four men’s and four women’s (with the silhouettes of “Toy Story’s” Woody and Bo-Peep at the entrances).
I love it when so much thought it put into a workplace. My office is at the end of the building, with a right angle to get into it and another right angle to my desk. I often don’t have a clue that something is happening in the office; and people tend to forget to come down and let me know that there’s a meeting, or pizza, or cake, or whatever.
