Naked Friday

June 17, 2016 5:23 PM

The next to last final frontier in office politics.
posted by Michael Tellurian (44 comments total)

For when you want to live your nightmares.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:43 PM on June 17, 2016 [7 favorites]

This is a thing I do not wish to occur in my workplace. But kudos to these folks for their bravery!
posted by caution live frogs at 5:51 PM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nope. Nope. Nopest
posted by greenhornet at 5:51 PM on June 17, 2016 [8 favorites]

Wasn't there a Dilbert joke about this 20 years ago?
posted by teponaztli at 5:51 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

While I was trying make sure that this was a hoax (sadly, it seems to be real, or as real as a publicity stunt can be) I happened across an article about a start-up where everyone is required to fast together from Monday to Wednesday.

I can't help but feel that a lot of this stuff is essentially religious in nature - people don't have a church or a strongly-held value system, or what value system they have is so idiosyncratic as to provide no community or history, and so they latch onto these absurd, faddy, culty practices. God knows activist culture is rife with similar misplaced religious feeling, but until all this start-up stuff really took off I felt like activist culture was just where a lot of broken, stunted people ended up and that was why things got fucked up so readily.

Fatties, visibly disabled people, sick people and old people need not apply, of course - the body is its own corset, we show that we are ready to achieve excellence and fulfillment in our total dedication to work by showing that we can control the body, maintain an air of youth and never really look sick.

God, I miss the dystopias we expected in the eighties. I could do with living in my drab, state-provided apartment and going to my boring, lifetime-employment state-provided job inspecting paper bags or doling out people's gruel rations or whatever.
posted by Frowner at 5:54 PM on June 17, 2016 [35 favorites]

Eh, it's not the worst office dress code I've ever heard of. I wonder if they kept up the "holding things in front of my crotch" routine all day long, or if that was just for the cameras.
posted by sfenders at 5:56 PM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]

Why?
posted by bendy at 6:16 PM on June 17, 2016

This felt like a drier, British version of What Our Office Learned Working Naked For One Month.
posted by bl1nk at 6:26 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Newcastle?? How did they manage to time this for the one day at the height of summer that wasn't too cold to even consider going naked?
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:29 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was a little worried that someone would get a nasty burn at tea, but I guess if you are going to go to work naked an office it could be worse. Say a welding shop. Or working a deep fryer. Or a short order cook (please, please please, no one order bacon). Actually, if you can go to work naked when you should be clothed, you're probably prime Ark B material.
posted by 445supermag at 6:32 PM on June 17, 2016 [15 favorites]

When I was in junior high, I was required to do a "trust fall" into the entwined arms of the people who had bullied me really aggressively for years. I had a panic attack and flailed until they dropped me.

I would infinitely rather go back to junior high and do another trust fall with those sexually-harassing, homophobic, gross, creepy, dangerous assholes than be pressured to be upbeat! and isn't-this-quirky! about being naked around co-workers. At least in junior high we could all admit that they hated me and I hated them and we all judged each other; there was no need to pretend that this was all innocent, morale-building work fun when it was really an opportunity to judge everyone's body, confidence, marks of age, marks of disability and physical fitness in an intensely intimate way and then semi-secretly apply those judgments to bad effect on the work futures of anyone with cellulite, nerves or a small dick.

What really does my head in about all this stuff is how it's so obviously, transparently coercive, inappropriate and potentially traumatizing but no one is supposed to say that. I mean, if they were all "you need to prove that you are thin, young, physically fit, sexy and confident to work here by showing up naked, also you should not have a history of being sexually assaulted or anything inconvenient like that, or religious views that require modesty, or fear of the stalkery dude at the next desk" one would at least have all the information.

Also, jesus god, what's going to happen to anyone who is trans? Bet you thought you didn't have to talk about your top surgery at work, huh? And those inappropriate questions that not-quite-hostile cis people ask about trans bodies? Wasn't it fun when you didn't have to hear them from your manager?

And, I add, just how cool are the straight people going to be with visibly queer people? IME, straight people can just about handle being naked around queer people who make very sure to act and appear straight and whose gender presentation is fairly standard, but it's dollars to donuts that if one were, say, a very butch woman, the straight ladies would freak out and the straight dudes would say fucked-up stuff.
posted by Frowner at 6:36 PM on June 17, 2016 [24 favorites]

I had someone at my last company that could not deal with me being barefoot. I actually had to wear shoes at my desk just because of her.

She probably wouldn't be cool with this, either.
posted by ryanrs at 6:50 PM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]

Okay, 12 comments and 90 minutes and nobody has used the acronym "NSFW" yet? (Well, if somebody has to do it, I'm somebody).

But seriously, this seems like the exact opposite of "Casual Friday", right?
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:58 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think this is just a dumb reality TV stunt, nothing more.
posted by treepour at 7:01 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel this exploited the receptionist.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:01 PM on June 17, 2016 [4 favorites]

How can you tell when they're Serious(TM) and are rolling up their sleeves?
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:35 PM on June 17, 2016 [3 favorites]

But if I get naked in the office, everyone will see the AspireAssist protruding from my belly!
posted by ejs at 7:44 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

If they're going to coyly keep from showing each other their junk, then they should at least just wear underwear.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:46 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

Also they keep talking about the rest of the week. What happened?
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:48 PM on June 17, 2016

Given all the problems discussed here at MeFi about the workplace, I can't assume that communal nudity on the job is a solution to any of them. It's just another.
posted by njohnson23 at 7:55 PM on June 17, 2016 [5 favorites]

I feel this exploited the receptionist.

Ok, so I just watched the video, and yeah. All the men in video covered their junk, whereas the women either wore underclothes, or were exposed. Pretty fucked up to put them in that position.
posted by ryanrs at 7:59 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

The receptionist was into it. She looked quite chipper the whole time. And they said t the beginning of the video that they could wear whatever they wanted. The other lady wore her underwear and seemed - skeptical.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 8:02 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

That would bring the office thermostat wars to a whole other level.
posted by madajb at 8:07 PM on June 17, 2016 [5 favorites]

"You can wear whatever you want; you can also take all your vacation days, don't worry about it!"

Later..."And people love working here so much, no one even wants to take a vacation!"
posted by Frowner at 8:08 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

yeah, the gender/body policing/power politics of this make me feel gross
posted by Existential Dread at 8:31 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

How does this not constitute a hostile workplace environment? If I was this firm's lawyer/ HR person, I'd be having a fit about this- it's a harassment lawsuit waiting to happen. Talk about walking on eggshells....
posted by LeRoienJaune at 9:03 PM on June 17, 2016

Basic politeness rule from BDSM munches: NAKED PEOPLE SIT ON TOWELS. Because pretty much nobody wants to sit where your naked ass has been sitting.

Nthing the thoughts above about coercion etc. Also, I thought the facilitator (?) guy totally undermined it (showed its true colors) by A) remaining fully dressed and B) the "get your clothes on!" admonishment at the end.
posted by Lexica at 9:22 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'll stick with "barefoot whenevers," thanks.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:20 PM on June 17, 2016

So much horror. Glass conference table! Pushing past the popcorn popper frontwise! The backs of aeron chairs on naked flesh! Toooooweeeeeels.

Creatives, man. I can picture a place or two where this would work and the offices had kind of the same touches. Those places were more like weird families and had beer in the fridge and kindness were always super cool.

This is also an old enough story to go to first grade. This place is more tech bubble side eye.

I guess we're still a few hours from Europe waking up an telling us is not even a thing there and this is how they desk with not having AC and went are we still hung up with bodies anyway?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:28 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

I worked for a really fucked-up company once where about 60% of the employees, including the boss, the number 2, the number 3 (and all their spouses) went to the same church. They were also Americans living and running this business in a foreign country. So the "office politics" were fucked up, creepy and cult-like (the boss often made the number 3 kiss him on the mouth at the end of meetings) and I can see this as something that group would do as a "team-building exercise."

I just want to get shit done at work, have pleasant conversations, and maybe a beer from time to time.
posted by My Dad at 10:29 PM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh my.
posted by AugustWest at 11:07 PM on June 17, 2016

Here's how you fight this: get a tattoo of the face of the highest ranking person in the office, on your inner thigh, looking upwards and smiling. Strut proudly, nakedly, around the office until a memo marked "URGENT" is sent out, ending naked workdays forever.
posted by fatbird at 11:13 PM on June 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

the boss often made the number 3 kiss him on the mouth at the end of meetings

holy god
posted by ao4047 at 11:37 PM on June 17, 2016 [6 favorites]

Here's the last bit of another episode from the same show, where the women are using similar covering techniques.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 1:52 AM on June 18, 2016

I guess I'm going to be the first one to mention this, but they stop working to have tea/coffee? I can't get through a morning without my trusty mug o' joe at my desk.
posted by tommasz at 5:05 AM on June 18, 2016

I also thought the smarmy clothed overseer was incredibly creepy and cannot understand how this would even be legal. I've always considered "clothing optional" at home but at work? Uh-uh.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 5:16 AM on June 18, 2016

yeah, that is a question - what happens, for real, when your work is like "let's do an inappropriate team-building exercise and all get naked"? How free was anyone actually to say no to this? In theory the photographer at the second linked one didn't participate (I bet he is a fat dude, actually, or has some other body thing going on) but the people who were actually going to be in the public-relations exercise, er, film were all naked, and everyone in the OP was wearing nothing more than underwear. I would have a lot more confidence in this if it was all "well, about 60% of the people decided to participate, but the others didn't want to, and they didn't have to explain why."

And then I feel like there's a real gender angle on this, too - it's much scarier and more dangerous for women to have images of their naked bodies out there on the internet than it is for men. I kept thinking about how terrible it would be if, later, one of these women switches to a different line of work and this either causes trouble for her or some creeper starts harassing her.

I feel like this stuff has a knock-on effect - both Silicon Valley and "creative" fields have all this culty "you must be an upper middle class, probably white, body-normative, nondisabled, young person to feel safe participating in our office nonsense" thing going on, and I'm sure that this discourages people from other backgrounds from even trying to get into those fields. Would I ever in a million, billion years take the chance of working at a place where I would have to work naked around randos and deal with their homohobic, transphobic, body-shaming bullshit while pretending I was totally into it? I guess if the other choice was working twelve-hour in a chicken-processing plant, but still, ugh.

I also see this - just like the chicken-processing - as a symptom of the decline of labor power.
posted by Frowner at 7:34 AM on June 18, 2016 [4 favorites]

Haha as if this company has a HR person. It's clearly just like 5 people or whatever.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:36 AM on June 18, 2016

They're all walking rather awkwardly - a certain amount of hunching and ungainly hobbling. Their body language suggests to me that they're all very uncomfortable with the intense scrutiny. I wonder how different it would be if they knew there were no cameras around.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:53 AM on June 18, 2016

On second thought, maybe being barefooted has a bit to do with that. I don't tend to wear heeled shoes, but even a minimally-soled shoe makes my gait different from being barefoot.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:06 AM on June 18, 2016

What is the sound of a dozen naked buttcheeks detaching from vinyl seats? Don't know, don't wanna know.
posted by emjaybee at 3:21 PM on June 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

What is the sound of a dozen naked buttcheeks detaching from vinyl seats?

All I can think of is Velcro, which is even more unsettling in this context.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:48 PM on June 18, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also they keep talking about the rest of the week.

I remember watching this show when it was originally broadcast. The complete show covers Monday to Friday. Here is a trailer.

The photocopying of body parts, shown in the trailer, also happens in the movie Filth.

It is hard to say whether Filth or Naked Office is the more bleak.

I remember when I watched the Naked Office thinking that the facilitator was creepy because he remained fully clothed throughout. There has been a similar series on the BBC. I never watched the BBC series.
posted by Erinaceus europaeus at 3:34 AM on June 19, 2016

Filth is on my list of movies to watch but I haven't been able to make myself do it. The book made me feel really bad. I have a feeling that the movie is probably good and that I will "like" it, but that I will not like watching it. Sort of like Louis CK's recent series, Horace and Pete.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:46 AM on June 19, 2016