Getting Googled

The blog was on summer vacation, but is now back and better than ever (under penalty of death.)


When people hear you work at Google, they usually get jealous. It’s supposed the greatest place in the world to work, and they pay employees exorbitant amounts of money to do things like associate words with other words. A million people (really, a million people) apply for a job there every year, and other than the whole caving-in-to-the-Chinese-government thing, I’ve never heard anyone badmouth the company. That is, until I was reading Gawker yesterday while I was supposed to be learning about copyright law.
I realize that New Yorkers are inherently skeptical about anything that sounds too good to be true, so it’s no surprise that we’re looking for the shortcomings in such a visible icon of supposed professional bliss. Perhaps we’re overly judgmental, or just jealous, (ok, we are,) but it’s also possible that the Goog is not all it’s cracked up to be. Yesterday I found myself becoming more and more curious about the mysterious insides of this omnipresent brand. See, I hear about this place all the fucking time. I’m dating a Googler.

He has been trying to get me to come in and see the place since he started there, and as he’s allowed to have two visitors a month, my only real excuse for putting it off is an inexplicable aversion to Chelsea—and laziness, as he usually eats lunch at noon and I don’t like being up that early. That said, I have been quite curious to see the place, this sanctuary of food and fun and friendly workspace that he so often tells me about at the end of his day. Everyone is SO NICE, he raves, and there’s Guitar Hero! Foosball! Ballpits! Professional masseuses! Air hockey! A gym! Scooters! And ALL THE FOOD YOU CAN EAT. Despite the fact that he thought he had food poisoning last week,* there is no end to his pontification about the delights of their cafeteria. Three squares a day are often relayed to me late in the evening in astounding detail, making my attempt at pizza bagels seem feeble and pithy. The Google 15 is, apparently, a common concern among new arrivals, and I’ve been tempted to make said Googler write down all the food he eats there just to approximate the amount of money they’re sinking into his stomach every year. (It’s gotta be well over the five figure mark, considering his metabolism.)

So yesterday I showed him the things people were saying on the interwebs about his beloved company, and as he read his jaw started to work, his eyes narrowed, and I think he may have even started sweating. They’re just jealous he assured me, and most of that is ridiculous. We don’t even use the 16th floor, the cafeteria is on 8, there is no view across the river etc etc. So today, I decided to go find out for myself.

As I made my way west, I started to wonder: Could the food really be bad, and my boyfriend simply a poor judge of culinary acceptability? Or did he just eat all the good stuff before the author of such accusations arrived? Also, were all the women really made-up hussie clones? Was my Googler surrounded every day by sexy eye-batting Googlettes? I imagined him coming home at night feeling like he had settled for the Yahoo of female companionship, ready to eat my disappointing food that I did not know the local or organic origin of, wishing he could be back with his cohort of corporate hippies parading around large blown up charts of ever-rising GOOG stock.
Of course, only parts of this turned out to be true.

Upon entering the building, I was told was that security was at an all time high—perhaps there were a lot of other Gawker readers who had the same notion as me today—and sure enough, as soon as I left the elevator, I was mildly scolded by a friendly black man for not having my visitors pass properly displayed on my shirt. (I mention he was black for a reason. I’ll get back to that.) As we walked to the Game Room, I saw numerous other blue poloed guards making their rounds and eyeing my sticky pass, reminding me of the hallway outside of Jay-Z’s office on 8th Avenue.
Google, I realized, is actually a lot like Def Jam.** The feeling of slight disappointment you have when you walk into Worldwide Plaza and don’t see champagne and fly girls, that’s the feeling you get when you don’t see the hippies dancing around the stock analysis. Because, and it’s easy to forget this, it’s just a fucking OFFICE. It’s uncomfortably quiet, with acres of desks and monitors and uninspired carpeting, and the lighting isn’t what you’d call sexy. An office. Because people are supposed to work there. And, like Def Jam, the company logo is EVERYWHERE, from the walls to the signs to the shirts on half the employees. (This, of course, is to remind you of where exactly it is that you are working.)

Once I got over the initial shock of the corporate environment, it all started to make sense. The fun stuff is just there to make the office evironment more bearable-- these people work with CODE all day, for god's sake. This in mind, I started to assess things with more perspective.

This is what I learned:

-The Game Room(s) are indeed awesome, and my five year old brother would be happy to relocate to one permanently. Also, my boyfriend is better than me at Guitar Hero and Foosball.

-There are Giant Bouncy Balls everywhere. And they really are quite fun.

-The women are totally normal in terms of appearance. I saw a couple of VP-types with suit jackets and high heels, but I also saw a much larger number in typical casual office-day attire, and even some in jeans, flip-flops and (this was, granted, too much) sweat pants. I would not have noticed any unusual excess of make-up unless I was looking for it, and when I did find it, it was on women who, I’m sorry to say, kind of needed it.

-The scooters are very handy for traversing the insanely large floorspace of the office, which spans the length of an entire city block.

-The cafeterias are like the cafeterias at NYU, only with much better food and far fewer people. And they’re cleaner. This is my only point of comparison, as I went to one of those weird high schools where they make you eat family-style.

-The food is, well, far better than you’d think. They have an actual sushi chef in one of the cafeterias who made me a truly delicious spicy tuna roll, and from the main “café” I sampled the salmon (very good,) the salad bar (exceeded expectations in all areas but dressings,) the couscous (pretty good,) some kind of grilled eggplant dish (SO good,) and the barbequed (?) tofu (ok, that was awful.) Then, as we took our trays out onto the terrace, we were greeted by a buffet of tasty “Mexican Street Food,” complete with mango and tutifruiti soda. And I had gelato. There are also kitchen areas all over the place, stocked with cereal dispensers, Clif bars, billions of beverages, candy… you get the idea. Google 15 my ass. Google 50.

-The cereal bins have those twist-to-flow knobs on the bottom, so if anyone was eating out of them “bare handed” they weren’t touching any of the cereal inside. So that's not really gross.

-The people are SO NICE. It is clearly commonplace to share a table with Googlers you don’t know, and people bring in their kids and their dogs like it’s no big deal. Also, I get the feeling that most of them aren’t native to the city. This is probably why they seem so nice. Plus they all make lots of money and are not afraid of being laid off.

-You can’t have sex in the bathroom. I’ll admit this was my first idea upon arriving. I harbor certain office fantasies (unashamed!) that I’ve always been tempted to fulfill, and the thought of being Googled at Google by my Googler was just too much. But then, with the tightened security and the whole getting-fired-if-we-get-caught thing (something the Googlers would call a CLM – Career Limiting Move) it seemed all too risky. You can, however, take a shower in there.

-There are no offices, only conference rooms, and everyone from temp to VP has a desk out “on the floor.”

-No one there smokes. Not a single person was puffing away on the terrace, or outside the entrance when I walked in and out. Freaks.

-And last but not least, perhaps my most startling revelation: there are no black people at Google. I saw one throughout my entire tour, (other than the man I mentioned outside of the elevator,) and he might have been visiting too. Indians, Asians, Canadians: yes. African Americans: no.
Really. Forget about China.
Somebody call Al Sharpton.


*He did not have food poisoning, as he gave whatever it was to me.
**Without the black people.