Believe In Your Office

The Office Is Changing — And It's More Interesting Than You Think (Part 1)

Episode Summary

In this fan-favorite format, co-hosts Josh and John go solo — and the conversation ends up being one of the most practical and entertaining episodes in the show's run. It starts, as many of the best conversations do, somewhere completely unrelated to office furniture. There's a DoorDash driver mistaken for an intruder, a machete, a pizza sent two hours in the wrong direction, and a tangent about paying cash for things that somehow lands on the entire philosophy of financial discipline. And then — as always — it gets back to the office. What rooms in the office are essentially extinct? The file room with the rolling track shelves. The 40-person boardroom. The massive L-shaped corner workstation built to hold a CRT monitor the size of a small refrigerator. John and Josh walk through how the office has physically transformed over the past 25 years — what disappeared, what came back, and what's showing up now that nobody expected. They dig into the felt-topped cubicle ceiling (yes, it's a real thing, and it works), why acoustic privacy is the new design challenge, how lighting has transformed from fluorescent buzz to app-controlled zone lighting, and why building an office with furniture instead of construction walls is smarter — legally, financially, and practically — than most business owners realize. There's also a genuinely interesting conversation about open plan vs. private office and why the cycle keeps repeating itself. Plus: hacky sacks are back, and Boomerang should put their logo on one.

Episode Notes

HOSTS

Josh Smargiassi — Host, Boomerang Office Furniture / Common Sense Office Furniture

John Sorrell — Co-Host & Office Furniture Industry Veteran

WHAT WE COVER

• DoorDash, a machete, and a very confused delivery driver — the intro that has nothing to do with furniture and everything to do with how we live now
• The case for paying cash and living below your means — a surprisingly real conversation about financial discipline
• Extinct office rooms: the file room on rolling tracks, the 40-person boardroom, the CRT corner insert workstation
• Why less square footage doesn't mean fewer people — it means smarter use of space
• The open office plan isn't new — Frank Lloyd Wright was doing it. And it keeps coming back around
• Why private spaces are coming back: when everything's open, you can't have a candid conversation without the whole floor hearing it
• Lighting evolution: from humming fluorescent tubes to app-controlled zone lighting that adjusts by section
• The felt cubicle ceiling — what it is, how it works acoustically, and why it's better than it sounds
• The tax and permitting advantages of building with furniture instead of walls — most business owners have no idea
• Sprinkler codes, HVAC, lighting clearance — why office furniture can replace construction in many applications
• Phone fatigue: why a whole patio of people sat outside at a bar with live music and nobody looked at their phone
• Hacky sacks are back — and Boomerang should put their logo on one

KEY QUOTES

"You don't need a 40-person boardroom. We did them — they were incredible — but now half the room zooms in anyway."

"The reason people do cubicles instead of walls: full write-off in year one vs. 1/39th depreciation for forty years. Most people never knew that."

"We can build out an entire office without doing any construction. That's the thing people never knew about Boomerang and Common Sense."

"Everything that was old is new again. The kids are hacky sacking now and nobody's on their phones. There's something happening."

PRODUCTS & REFERENCES MENTIONED

Artifex — acoustic felt cubicle ceiling panels (creates privacy without full enclosure)

Boomerang's showroom, South Jersey — features app-controlled zone lighting and a live example of the felt cubicle ceiling installation

The furniture-as-construction argument: full Section 179 write-off vs. 39-year straight-line depreciation for construction

SPONSORED BY

Boomerang Office Furniture — boomerangofficefurniture.com

Common Sense Office Furniture — commonsenseoff.com