Power is played out through all kind of forces in the office, seen and unseen. Through job titles, strategic clique-ing, and the way people use time (making people wait for a meeting or email response, for instance), we signal who holds influence. Even during business and company lunches, what and how much we eat are dictated by social standing.
Actor and comedian Larry David, meticulous observer of life’s micro-moments, drew upon another such little-examined measure of power in the office as a source of inspiration for this week’s episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm: the size and heft of the boss’s desk.
Although they’re becoming rare artifacts now that open offices and flat structures are firmly in vogue, larger-than-life corner-office desks still live in some corporate spaces. In the same way that powerful people can take up more time, they’re allowed to hog space and sit in literal elevation. That said, psychologists have observed that furniture arrangements that offer one static dynamic are unusual for the offices of high-ranking executives. Instead, most will have both a common seating area where equals can sit together, separate from the big desk that holds the power of a throne or judge’s bench.
That’s the type of office David and his agent Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) find themselves in for a fictional meeting with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the real-life creator of the hit musical Hamilton, at Miranda’s agent’s office in Los Angeles. They’re there to discuss David’s project, Fatwa! The Musical!, which David has written and Miranda has agreed to produce. The agent turns full use of the spacious office over to the three men, but while David and Greene choose two chairs in a grouping of four, away from the agent’s large desk, Miranda takes charge of the command center, the executive desk, and assumes the power position, leaning back and resting his sneakered feet.