This is a story about a small windowless room on the twenty-second floor of a downtown Chicago office building, what the leadership of the company that occupies that floor designated the room to be, and what — over the course of the past two and a half years — the employees who work on that floor have, without any official acknowledgment, decided to make of it instead.

The room, in the original architectural drawings of the office space, was labeled “Storage / Utility.” It is approximately eleven feet by nine feet. It has one door and no windows. It is located at the end of a small hallway near the back of the floor, past the accounting department and the copier alcove. It is furnished, at the time of this writing, with one small couch, one armchair, one white noise machine, one wall clock, one small side table with a plant on it, and one framed print of a beach at sunset.

In April of 2023, the company’s HR department — following what was, in the official memo announcing the change, described as “an extended internal listening exercise around employee wellbeing” — reclassified the room. The new designation was: “Wellness / Quiet Space.”

The memo, according to a copy shared with me, described the room’s intended use as follows: “The Wellness Space is available for any employee who needs a moment of quiet during the workday. It may be used for meditation, prayer, deep breathing, or simply resting. There is no sign-up required. The Wellness Space is not for phone calls, video meetings, or meals.”

The memo, in its entirety, ran to approximately three hundred and forty words.

The room, at the time of this writing, is used for none of these things.

The room is used for what the fifty-eight employees who share the floor have, over the course of two and a half years, developed into a specific and consistent informal economy.

The origin

The economy did not, in the account of the employees I spoke with, emerge from any organized planning.

It emerged, in the specific way of workplace systems, from a series of small individual accidents.

The first accident, in the reconstructed timeline several employees have given me, occurred approximately six weeks after the room was reclassified. In late May of 2023, an accountant on the team — I will call her Miriam, because she chose the name — went into the Wellness Space at 2:47 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. She was, in her account, exhausted. She had been at her desk since 6:30 that morning. She had not eaten lunch. She had been, for approximately three hours, staring at a spreadsheet that was not, in her professional opinion, going to resolve itself in the manner that her manager was expecting.

She closed the door of the Wellness Space. She sat on the couch. She fell asleep.

She has told me she slept for exactly twenty-two minutes.

She has told me she woke up at 3:09 p.m. She has told me she felt, at that moment, “the specific kind of restored that a good short nap will produce — the version of restored that is not, in any way, obtainable by drinking coffee.”

She has told me she left the room. She has told me she returned to her desk. She has told me she resolved the spreadsheet within the following hour.

She has told me she told exactly one colleague about the nap, the following Monday. She has told me the colleague was another accountant, whom she trusts. She has told me the colleague, when informed about the nap, asked one question: “The room is unlocked, then. Is it.”

Miriam confirmed that yes, the room was unlocked.

Her colleague — whom I will call Frida, because she asked me to — went into the Wellness Space the following afternoon. She did not, in her account, sleep. She instead used the twenty minutes to close her eyes and mentally rehearse a difficult conversation she was, at that time, avoiding having with her direct report.

She has told me the mental rehearsal was, in her professional opinion, more useful than any other twenty minutes of her workday had been in months.

She has told me she then, the following Wednesday, went into the room and did a twenty-minute review of a set of contract documents she had been avoiding.

She has told me the room, in the twenty-minute increments she gave to it, became — in her phrasing — “the most productive twenty minutes of my week, every single week.”

She has told me she told two additional colleagues about it.

Each of them told two additional colleagues.

By August of 2023, in the reconstructed timeline, approximately fourteen employees on the floor were, in some form, using the Wellness Space.

The first economic exchange

The first exchange, in the historical record several employees have compiled, occurred in September of 2023.

The exchange, in Miriam’s account, involved her and a marketing coordinator I will call Bea. Bea had booked the Wellness Space — informally, on a shared Google Sheet the accounting department had, by then, quietly begun maintaining — for the 2:00 p.m. to 2:20 p.m. slot on a Tuesday. Miriam, on that Tuesday morning, discovered that she had a specific and unavoidable deadline that would require her to work through her intended 2:00 p.m. Wellness Space slot.

Miriam, in her account, walked to Bea’s desk. She asked Bea, in what she described to me as “a specific and slightly awkward way,” whether Bea would consider trading her 2:00 p.m. slot for Miriam’s 4:00 p.m. slot.

Bea, according to Miriam, said yes.

Miriam then asked Bea whether, in addition to the slot trade, Bea would be willing to bring her a coffee from the small café on the ground floor of the building, given that Miriam would not have time to leave her desk.

Bea, according to Miriam, said yes.

Miriam took Bea’s 2:00 p.m. slot. Bea took Miriam’s 4:00 p.m. slot. Bea brought Miriam a small oat milk latte at 2:15 p.m.

Miriam has told me that at approximately 3:30 p.m. that same day, she noticed that Bea had, on the shared Google Sheet, added a small notation next to her name that read: “coffee credit: 1.”

Miriam has told me she did not understand what this meant.

She has told me she understood, in the weeks that followed.

The system as it currently exists

I want to describe the current system, because it is one of the more elegant informal economies I have encountered in the course of reporting for this publication.

The system is maintained, in its current form, on a single Google Sheet. The sheet is titled “Wellness Sched.” It is shared, in a specific and carefully-maintained fashion, with a rotating group of employees. New employees are added to the sheet by existing employees, in what one employee described to me as “a specific quiet welcome, usually about three weeks after they start.”

At the time of this writing, the sheet is shared with fifty-eight of the sixty-one employees on the floor.

The three employees who are not on the sheet are, respectively: the floor’s HR representative, the floor’s senior manager, and a specific junior analyst who has been on the floor for four months and who — in the assessment of the employees I spoke with — has not yet been evaluated for trust.

The sheet contains the following columns:

The Trade Notes column is where the economy actually lives.

Entries in the Trade Notes column, in a sample I was shown, include:

“Slot trade with Miriam — she owes me one coffee (oat milk latte, med.)”

“Traded to Bea for 3:00 tomorrow — she owed me a meeting-prep favor from June, we’re square”

“Owes: 1 small favor of my choice, TBD”

“Cashed in Frida’s June favor — she reviewed the Peterson deck for me at 6pm Thursday. Fair value: 45 min of work. Wellness slot exchange rate: approximately 2 slots. Adjusted her credit: -2.”

“Traded to Owen for tomorrow AM — I’ll take his 9:30 stand-up if he takes my 2:00 today. HE OWES ONE STAND-UP.”

The Trade Notes column contains, at the time of this writing, approximately fourteen months of accumulated entries. It runs to eleven single-spaced pages when printed. Several employees have, over the course of these fourteen months, developed personal reputations within the system. Frida, according to multiple employees, is regarded as “the fairest trader on the floor.” Owen, an operations manager, is regarded as “someone you should not trade a stand-up meeting with because he will find a way to make you owe him two.” Bea, according to the same accounts, is “the person you go to when you need a same-day slot and are willing to overpay.”

The system, in the assessments of the employees I spoke with, functions.

It functions well.

It functions, several employees told me, better than most of the formal systems the company has put in place over the past two and a half years.

What the system produces

I want to describe what the system produces, in the assessments of the employees who use it, because the productions are — in my honest reading of them — genuinely significant.

The first thing the system produces is a specific kind of trust between coworkers. Miriam, when I asked her about this, told me: “I have worked at this company for nine years. Before the Wellness Space became what it became, I had — in the specific way of modern corporate life — a set of professional relationships with my coworkers. Warm. Cordial. Nothing personal. The Wellness Space has created something else. It has created a set of small favors owed and repaid. It has created a set of trades that require me to know what my coworkers actually need. It has created the specific kind of small mutual dependence that, in most twenty-first-century offices, has been engineered out of existence.”

The second thing the system produces is a specific reduction in the number of hours the employees on the floor are, on average, actually working. The system, in the estimation of one employee who tracks this, has reduced the average productive-hour count on the floor by approximately six percent. The same employee — who is, professionally, a data analyst — has told me that in the same period, the floor’s overall output has increased by approximately eleven percent.

Nobody, according to this employee, has been able to fully explain why.

The employee’s working theory, which she has shared with several colleagues but not with any managers, is that the system provides “the specific kind of recovery time that modern knowledge work requires but does not provide.” She has told me she believes that the six percent reduction in working hours is more than compensated for by the eleven percent increase in the quality and consistency of the work that gets done in the remaining hours.

The third thing the system produces is a specific kind of shared secret. The system is, by the account of every employee I spoke with, actively hidden from the floor’s leadership. The three employees who are not on the shared Google Sheet — the HR representative, the senior manager, and the recent junior analyst — do not, so far as anyone knows, have any awareness of the system’s existence.

I asked several employees how they had, collectively, maintained the secret for two and a half years.

I received several answers.

One employee — I will call her Corinna — told me: “The secret is maintained because it is in everyone’s interest to maintain it. If the leadership becomes aware of the system, they will either shut it down or attempt to formalize it. If they shut it down, we lose the specific thing that has made this floor bearable for two and a half years. If they formalize it, they will make it a program. It will have goals. It will have metrics. It will have quarterly reports. It will, in every meaningful sense, cease to be the thing it currently is. The system works because it is informal. It works because it is unofficial. It works because it is, in the strictest sense, ours.”

Another employee — Owen, the operations manager — told me: “We are all professionals. We know how to keep a secret when there is a reason to keep it. There is a reason to keep this one.”

A third employee — Frida — told me: “I have been part of this system for two and a half years. In that time, I have watched fourteen new employees be brought into it. In each of those fourteen cases, the new employee was, in effect, given a small test. They were told about the system. They were asked to use it, in a small way. They were watched to see whether they honored the trades they made. Every one of them has, so far, honored their trades. Nobody has, so far, told a manager. Nobody has, so far, complained about the informality of the system. Nobody has, so far, done anything to threaten it. This is, I think, a specific and quiet miracle. It is a functioning system of trust that has been sustained by fifty-eight people, for two and a half years, without a single formal enforcement mechanism.”

She has told me: “I have worked at four companies in my professional life. This is the first system, in any of them, that has worked because everyone involved wanted it to work.”

The one moment the system was almost discovered

There is, in the historical record several employees have compiled, one moment when the system was nearly discovered.

The moment occurred in the fall of 2024.

The floor’s senior manager — a woman I will not name, but who several employees I spoke with described as “extremely well-meaning and specifically clueless in a way that has, over the years, become a kind of blessing” — approached the Wellness Space at 3:14 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon in October.

She was, according to Bea, who witnessed the incident, holding a small notebook.

She stopped in front of the door of the Wellness Space. She looked at the door. She looked at her notebook. She looked at the door again.

She raised her hand as if to knock.

She then, according to Bea, put her hand down. She stood in front of the door for approximately six seconds. She then walked away.

Bea has told me she does not know why the senior manager did not knock.

Bea has told me she has, in the fourteen months since, occasionally wondered whether the senior manager knew — in some specific and quiet way — what was inside the room, and had decided, in that six-second pause, not to disturb it.

Bea has told me she has no evidence for this theory.

She has told me she believes it anyway.

She has told me: “I do not know if our senior manager, in fact, knows about the system. I do not know if she has, over two and a half years, quietly figured out that the Wellness Space is being used differently than the memo she wrote describes. I do not know if she has, in her own way, decided to protect it by not knowing about it more specifically than she does. I know only that she has not, in two and a half years, once mentioned the Wellness Space in a meeting. She has not once asked how it is being used. She has not once, in a quarterly all-hands, referenced it as a wellness initiative that she is proud of. She has, in the strictest sense, allowed it to exist.”

She has told me: “I have thought a great deal about this. I have decided, tentatively, that our senior manager is one of us. I have decided that she does not know she is one of us. I have decided that this is, in some strange and specific way, the most functional working relationship I have ever had with a boss.”

What the system means

I want to try, briefly, to describe what I think the system means, because I have thought about it a great deal in the weeks since I first heard about it.

The system means, in the first place, that a group of fifty-eight professionals in a downtown Chicago office building have, over the course of two and a half years, quietly built a small functioning economy of mutual aid. They have done this in a small windowless room. They have done this without permission. They have done this without any formal structure. They have sustained it through fourteen new employee onboardings and through at least one near-discovery by leadership. They have done all of this — this is important — in service of no goal larger than the specific goal of making each other’s Tuesdays slightly more bearable.

The system means, in the second place, that the specific corporate infrastructure that most of us work inside of has, in the years since 2020, produced a category of exhaustion that the infrastructure itself cannot address. The Wellness Space memo, which described the room as a place for meditation and prayer, was not, in its own terms, wrong. But it also was not, in its own terms, sufficient. The room could not, on the terms the memo proposed, actually help the people who work near it. It could only help them once they had, collectively, decided to make it into something else.

The system means, in the third place, that when a group of professionals is given a small unstructured resource and left mostly alone, they will — in a specific and consistent way — build something that works better than the thing they were given. This is not, in my honest opinion, an insignificant observation about how modern work actually functions. (For a related earlier piece on the small quiet ways that professionals, given a small unstructured resource, will build something that works better than the thing they were given, see the Wattalife story about the woman in Minneapolis who has been receiving her salary twice for six months and has quietly built a small careful system for handling it.)

Miriam, when I asked her what she thought would happen if the system were formally sanctioned by the company — if leadership announced tomorrow that the Wellness Space had been officially reclassified as a “Small Informal Economies Space” and that the shared Google Sheet had been endorsed by HR — she thought about it for approximately eleven seconds.

She then said: “It would end within a quarter. It would end because they would make it a program. They would add goals to it. They would ask us to report on the outcomes. They would, in an attempt to preserve it, kill it.”

She said: “The room works because nobody, officially, knows what it is. That is not, I think, an accident. That is the actual mechanism. That is the thing that makes it functional. If you take that away, you take the room away.”

She said: “I would rather, honestly, that this article does not become known to our leadership.”

I want to note, on the record, that Miriam laughed after she said this. I want to note that in the same conversation she described, at some length, the specific coffee order she was owed by three of her colleagues at the time of our last call.

I want to note that when I asked her what she planned to do with all the coffee, she said: “I plan to accept it, one small cup at a time, for as long as this specific version of my working life continues to be possible.”

She said: “I have, in nine years at this company, never had this specific version of my working life before. I intend, for as long as possible, to hold onto it.”

—

Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, in the weeks since reporting this story, thought about the specific small informal systems that exist in the workplaces she herself has worked in over the years. She has identified two of them. She has decided not to write about either. She has decided, on reflection, to protect them.