Office Living Culture Clash

A story about how Shaan Puri hired Steve Bartlett, a young entrepreneur from the UK, who ended up living in their San Francisco office and causing some workplace culture issues.

"Steve Bartlett cold emailed me, and I flew him and his buddy out. They would stay for 3 months at a time on tourist visas, then go back and come again. We got them a hotel initially, but since they were staying for a while, we let them stay at the office since there was an apartment built in.

Steve went from living in a dump as a college dropout in the UK to living in this baller pad in San Francisco that had a bar built into it, a private chef, and all these perks. He would take full advantage of it. People would leave the office at 6-7 PM, and then he'd get active on Tinder.

One day I came in and there was a girl doing the walk of shame, holding her heels, walking out of the office. We had women working in the office asking 'Who is this girl and why is she hungover leaving the bedroom in the office?' Steve would come down, proud of himself, like he was winning at life.

I had to talk to him about it, but even during the conversation, it felt lame - like he was in the principal's office and I was the principal. He wasn't doing anything malicious, but there were professionalism issues - leaving the bar sticky, beers everywhere, noise complaints from neighbors.

The breaking point came when I had just talked to our office manager, promising Steve would clean up and be more professional. The next day, she opened the supply closet to get supplies for a board meeting, and a giant pizza box fell out. She was like 'I can't do this, Shaan, I can't do this.'"