Office Hack #17 — Weebly’s Secret Room
Envoy is all about making things easier and more fun in the office. In that spirit, we are proud to bring you our new Envoy Office Hacks podcast series. Every week, we deliver the coolest, most ingenious, and just plain fun fixes people have invented to improve efficiency and productivity in their workplace.
Many of our office hacks earn their rightful place on the scoreboard of awesome… but this one might take the cake.
Listen to this story on our Office Hacks podcast.
Weebly is a website and e-commerce company based in San Francisco. It has a lot of nice features in its office, but one in particular is less than obvious. See if you can spot it.
If you are feeling an urge to start pulling on books, you’re on the right track.
Yes, Weebly has a secret room!
And seeing as the company manifesto is called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Weebly”, it is only fitting that the secret door mechanism would be inside a hollowed out Douglas Adams book.
“We got a nice hardcover copy of this book and we were able to hide the mechanism inside. When you push it, it releases this lever. … there’s just a simple latch that opens up and then a couple things that provide some tension so that the bookshelf has this nice pop-open right as you press it.”
David Rusenko, Co-Founder of Weebly
Open sesame.
Many things happen in this prohibition-meets-steam-punk space, including poker games, chess matches, and covert happy hours. But work happens here too.
“…if you’re in one space and you’re just blocked mentally, then there’s a whole other space whether it’s one of our conference rooms or here in the secret room that really help harness that creative energy.”
David Rusenko, Co-Founder of Weebly
According to co-founder David Rusenko, Weebly’s secret room is as much about creative expression and flair as it is about retaining talent.
“…we wanted to build the type of office where you walk in, and you have a look at it as a prospective employee, and you just say, “That looks like the type of place I want to go work.” As you’re coming into work every day, there’s these little, fun elements that you can take advantage of that add this level of excitement of going to work. It’s not this sort of stodgy, low drop ceiling, awful, fluorescent lights that are just like burning holes in your retina, but something that’s very comfortable that is very collaborative.”
How to hack it
If you want to hack a speakeasy into your workspace, well, you may want to look up these guys:
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More Office Hacks
If you enjoyed this hack be sure to check out other Envoy Office Hacks, including:
A mobile meeting space in a rolling room from white-hot software start-up, Slack:
And one office’s creative solution to boring office walls — the Wall of Lego:
And a social psychology experiment in healthy eating from Social Print Studio:
Or how about a robotic sales gong to crank up team spirit in the office:
And then there’s Hootsuite’s office hack: an open office turned ski village.
Never underestimate the power of taxidermy on company culture…
Pub Nub hacks its way from annoying coffee woes… to website.
Mozilla takes something old and makes it new again.
One man’s getaway is another man’s office.
A big orange slide makes getting around this office a whole lot of fun.
No office boardroom is complete without some paddles and a net.
And here’s THE perfect hack for gross office kitchens everywhere.
Here’s a hack for the kid in all of us.
Sharing praise where praise is due. Now possible, regardless of distance between praiser and praisee.
Group decisions are notoriously difficult. This hack turns friction into fun with a customized Lunch Bot.
Time-consuming trips to the office washroom are a thing of the past… at this company anyway.
Got an Office Hack you’d like to share? Do you know a stroke of genius that has made an office more productive or fun? You could be featured in a future Envoy Office Hack — let us know about it at officehacks@envoy.com.
