If Cats Ran Human Workplaces
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There is a particular kind of thought experiment that occurs to almost every cat owner at some point, usually while watching their cat calmly ignore a request, claim a spot of prime real estate with zero negotiation, and generally conduct itself with the quiet confidence of someone who has never once doubted their own authority. It raises an obvious question: what would happen if that same energy were applied to an actual workplace, with actual meetings, actual deadlines, and an actual org chart.
The honest answer is that very little would get done, on a schedule that made sense to absolutely no one, and yet somehow the office would run with more confidence and considerably less unnecessary urgency than most human ones currently manage. Here is roughly how it would go.
The Meeting Schedule
Meetings under a cat-run workplace would exist, technically, but participation would be entirely voluntary and largely symbolic.
- Meetings would be called at whatever time felt right in the moment, with zero regard for calendar invites sent days in advance
- Attendance would be optional and frequently limited to walking across the table once, making eye contact with everyone present, and leaving
- Any meeting running past roughly eleven minutes would be ended unilaterally by someone falling asleep in the middle of the table
- The most important agenda item would always be decided by whoever got there first and sat directly on the relevant documents
- Video calls would be paused indefinitely the moment anything outside the window moved
The Org Chart
Hierarchy would exist, but it would bear no relationship to titles, tenure, or anything resembling merit.
- Leadership would be determined entirely by whoever currently occupied the highest surface in the room
- Authority would shift the instant a higher surface became available, with no formal transition process or announcement required
- Middle management would consist exclusively of whoever happened to be standing in a doorway, blocking it without explanation
- The most senior position in the company would go, unquestioned, to whoever was found asleep in the CEO's chair that morning
Performance Reviews
Feedback would be immediate, entirely nonverbal, and almost impossible to appeal.
- Performance would be evaluated in real time through direct, unblinking eye contact, with no formal documentation required
- A slow blink would indicate approval; anything else would require the recipient to simply infer the outcome on their own
- Poor performance would be addressed by immediately and silently leaving the room, with no further comment offered
- Annual reviews would be replaced entirely with a single knocked-over pen, understood by all parties to be a comprehensive summary
The Open Floor Plan
Open-plan offices would remain, but every desk would eventually be reassigned according to entirely different criteria than seating charts currently use.
- Desk assignments would default to whichever chair was most recently vacated and still warm
- A single sunbeam crossing any part of the office would immediately become the most contested piece of real estate in the building
- Standing desks would be repurposed exclusively as extremely tall, extremely impractical perches
- Any open box, regardless of what it originally contained, would be treated as a legitimate and immediately claimed workstation
Deadlines and Time Management
The concept of urgency would survive in name only, applied selectively and never to anything an actual deadline required.
- Deadlines would be acknowledged, then entirely ignored, right up until the exact final moment, at which point extreme urgency would appear from nowhere
- The only tasks completed ahead of schedule would be the ones nobody had actually asked for
- A full day's work would routinely be abandoned the instant a interesting sound occurred anywhere nearby
- Productivity would peak, without exception, at 3am, generating a burst of activity that no one present was awake to appreciate
Communication Style
Workplace communication would shift from written memos and emails to a system built entirely around presence, silence, and the occasional pointed stare.
- Disagreement would be communicated through a single flattened ear and an immediate change of direction, no further explanation offered
- Full approval of an idea would be indicated by walking directly across the relevant paperwork and sitting down on it
- Requests for attention would escalate from a single quiet vocalisation to a considerably louder one, repeated at increasing volume until acknowledged
- All group chat activity would functionally cease the moment anyone opened a can of anything nearby
The Break Room
Break room culture would remain intact in spirit, if not in structure — plenty of lounging, very little actual conversation.
- The break room would double, unofficially, as the primary meeting room, the primary nap room, and the primary site of any actual decision-making
- Snacks brought in by any individual would be treated as immediately public property, regardless of labelling
- The most popular break room activity would be sitting near, but not directly participating in, whatever anyone else was doing
- Any request to "grab five minutes" would be reliably interpreted as an invitation to a nap lasting several hours
A Quick Summary of the New Employee Handbook
- Attendance is optional; presence is a statement, not an obligation
- Authority belongs to whoever holds the highest surface in the room
- Feedback is delivered through eye contact and rarely repeated
- Deadlines exist in theory and are met entirely on their own schedule
- The best real estate in the building is whatever patch of sun exists that day
It would not, by any conventional measure, be an efficient workplace. But it is difficult to argue with the confidence, the total absence of unnecessary stress, and the sheer conviction with which every single decision — however arbitrary — would be made and never once second-guessed.