On Monday I had the chance to go to the Bloomberg L.P. building. Bloomberg is probably the largest financial news outlet in the country, so I guess it's kind of a big deal. It's the company former Mayor Bloomberg of New York started back in the 80's. Of course, I was there for a reason. It was a field trip for my public finance class. Our professor, who isn't actually a professor, he's just visiting this semester and teaching this one class because he's an expert, used to work there, so he got us in. So for two hours we sat in a conference room and had a discussion about bonds and the market with two guys who work there, which was marginally interesting. My favorite part of the trip, though, was walking through the building on the way to that conference room.
We started out in the lobby, which was pretty standard, besides some weird wooden sculptures along one wall that looked like what I imagine pterodactyl nests wood look like (I don't understand art). The lady at the desk took our picture and we got a little visitors badge to hang around our necks. We walked past the security guards, who scanned our badges, and this is where things started to get awesome. Past the guard station we came to an elevator bank that was dark except for some purple light coming from behind white wall panels that would fade out as others lit up. We got into an elevator and went up to the 6th floor. We exited into another purple elevator bank and had to walk to the other side of the building to catch an elevator down to LL2. As we walked, I saw some amazing things. First of all, the walls are all white marble. I know this because I felt them, like a weirdo. We walked past a help desk, which let me to believe that the building is so big that even people who work there get lost. Past the help desk, the hallway curved around and opened up into a huge commons space, with orange and black chairs and tables scattered across the white floor. There were little kiosks everywhere with organic potato chips, Oreos, oatmeal, juice, soda, and just about any other snack food you could think of. Oh, and all that stuff was free if you worked there. As the hall curved around more, it narrowed again and we walked past a fish tank wall, and I thought, "of course there's a fish tank wall." As we walked a little farther, we walked past two glass walled conference rooms with white letters on the outside that read "Boston" and "Philadelphia", raised up and set back a little from the wide hallway. On the landing of the steps that let to those conference rooms, there was a coy pond. Yes, a coy pond. A coy pond in the building. With real coy. I could see them through the glass walls that extended about a foot above the ground, just swimmin' around in there. Thats where my mind exploded. We walked into another elevator bank, went down to LL2, got some free soda, and sat in a conference room with white tables and grey walls. The whole place looked like it was from the future. Ultra modern, with screens everywhere displaying charts and stock exchange data. It was quite an experience.
Now, don't get me wrong, I would never want to work there. I think working in finance would be terribly boring. But the building was super cool. And it added some descriptions to my new definition of "rich" that has been forming since we moved to New York.
"Rich" is having a coy pond in your building.
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