Apple’s gigantic glass mothership is supposed to be the way workspaces will be designed in the future. Right now, it is the way Apple employees get cuts and bruises.
Apple’s space-age Cupertino headquarters has 45-foot-tall panels of curved glass. Most of the inside walls are also made of glass. This was to make everyone feel connected—everyone can see everyone else even when they are in their own offices—called “pods” in Apple-speak.
Problem is, people can see right through glass.
That means that when employees, walking through the halls staring at their iPhones, slam into invisible partitions, everyone else can see it happen.
And it happens quite a lot. According to iDrop News, at least seven people hurt themselves smashing into glass walls the day the new building opened.
Marketwatch reported that at least two people hit a wall hard enough for 911 to be called. Both had minor cuts and did not appear to need hospitalization.
California law on construction safety states, “Employees shall be protected against the hazard of walking through glass by barriers or by conspicuous durable markings.”
Nobody has sued and Apple hasn’t received any citations, Marketwatch reported.
For a while employees started stickling blank post-it notes to the glass walls. Management decided sticky notes ruined the building’s transparent spaceship aesthetics, so the notes had to come down.
In 2011, 83-year-old Evelyn Paswall walked at full speed into the glass wall of the Apple Store Manhasset on Long Island, New York, breaking her nose, CBS reported.
Paswall sued the company, Bloomberg.com reported. Apple didn’t end up having to pay anything.
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