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Bartleby: The latest in WFH
巴托比：酒店办公最新进展
Can “work from hotel” become a thing?
“酒店办公”会流行起来吗？
Your columnist investigates
专栏作家为您调查
As summer descends with a vengeance on the northern hemisphere, you may be fantasising about the promise of “working from anywhere”.
随着北半球夏日突然来临，你可能会幻想“在任何地方办公”的前景。
A colleague’s PowerPoint presentation go down better by the poolside, washed down with a mojito.
同事的PPT演示文稿放在泳池边，再配上一杯莫吉托，效果更好。
For most office grunts such fantasies remain just that—“anywhere” boils down to the discomfort of the sweaty kitchen table, a noisy café or the office hot desk.
对于大多数办公室职员来说，这样的幻想仍然只是幻想--“任何地方”归结起来都是热到让人出汗的厨房桌子、嘈杂的咖啡馆或办公室的轮用办公桌这些让人不舒服的地方。
That has not stopped venues offering to combine the liberty of the home office (minus the offspring and the dirty dishes) with the climate control of the corporate HQ (minus the boss looking over your shoulder).
这并没有阻止一些场所将居家办公的自由(抛开子女和脏盘子)与公司总部的气氛调节(没有老板的监视)结合起来。
“Third spaces”, neither office nor home, are not a new idea.
既不是办公室，也不是家的“第三空间”并非一个新概念。
Soho House, a chain of fashionable clubs, pioneered 30 years ago the concept of work while mingling with other professionals in an elegant setting.
苏荷馆是一家时尚俱乐部连锁，30年前，它开创了在优雅的环境中与其他专业人士交际的同时进行办公的概念。
Now hotels are getting in on the action.
现在，酒店也加入了这一行列。
Your columnist, a guest Bartleby, tried out two recent London offerings.
您的专栏作家巴托比作为顾客，尝试了最近在伦敦推出的两家酒店。
She first headed to Birch, a hotel in a Georgian manor on 55 acres of Hertfordshire just north of the city.
她首先去了桦木酒店，这家酒店位于一座乔治王朝风格的庄园中，地处城市北部的赫特福德郡，占地55英亩。
The venue invites you to “come work miracles” at its Hub co-working area, “set strategies” in spaces “ready to fit 5 or 50” or “connect and create” with classes in pottery, sourdough baking, “foraging with our farmer” and other structured activities.
这家酒店会邀请顾客在Hub联合工作区“创造奇迹”，在“可容纳5或50人”的空间中“制定策略”，或在陶艺课、面包烘焙课、“与我们的农民一起觅食”等结构化活动中进行“连接和创造”。
Men, women and gender-fluid people in their 20s and early 30s hunch over laptops and glasses of red wine on the terrace.
20多岁和30岁出头的男人、女人和流动性别的人在露台上对着笔记本电脑和红酒弓着腰。
Some digital nomads pay a monthly membership fee and enjoy special discounts to stay in the property and work remotely, but you can, like Bartleby, come as an overnight guest.
一些数字游牧民会每月缴纳会员费，并享受特殊折扣，从而留在这里远程工作，但你可以像巴托比一样，待一晚就走。
Her second destination was the Shangri-La hotel in the Shard, which now offers stays from 10am to 6pm.
她的第二个目的地是碎片大厦的香格里拉酒店，该酒店现在提供上午10点到下午6点的住宿服务。
The pass grants access to a room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on central London, and to Western Europe’s highest infinity pool.
持有通行证的顾客能够获得一个有落地窗的房间，在房间里俯瞰伦敦市中心，还能够享受西欧最高的无边泳池。
It is aimed at those wishing to work and relax by offering a “change of scenery to inspire and invigorate”.
通过“改变环境来让人们受到启发并精神焕发”，该酒店将目标顾客锁定为那些希望工作和放松的人。
Both Birch and the Shangri-La have their virtues.
桦木酒店和香格里拉酒店都有各自的优点。
Birch’s Wi-Fi was excellent and the workspaces had enough sockets to avoid undignified tussles for the last place to plug in your chargers.
桦木酒店的无线网非常棒，办公空间内有足够的插座，避免顾客为最后一个插充电器的地方发生有损尊严的争执。
The “Gentle Flow” stretch class in which Bartleby enrolled, in the spirit of going native, was perfectly pleasant (notwithstanding the instructor’s insistence on starting with an astrological update and reciting a poem at the end).
巴托比本着入乡随俗的精神报名参加的“柔流瑜伽”拉伸课非常令人愉快(尽管教练坚持从占星学的更新开始课程，以背诵一首诗结束)。
So were laps in the Shangri-La’s infinity pool and the view of St Paul’s Cathedral from her room on the 38th floor.
在香格里拉酒店的无边泳池中游上几圈，以及从她38层的房间里享受圣保罗大教堂的景色也同样令人愉悦。
Yet problems soon became apparent.
然而，问题很快就显现出来了。
The first is price.
首先是价格。
An overnight stay at Birch sets you—or, if you are lucky like Bartleby, your employer—back 160 pounds ($192).
在桦木酒店住一晚就要花掉你160英镑(192美元)，但如果你像巴托比一样幸运的话，这笔钱就由你的老板出。
The Shangri-La charges 350 pounds for a standard room.
香格里拉酒店标间的价格则是350英镑。
Cities have plenty of cheaper “third spaces” these days; a co-working space costs a fraction of that.
如今，各个城市有很多更便宜的“第三空间”；联合办公空间的价格只是上述价格的零头。
The second problem is: how productive can workers be with all the distractions that are designed to make work not feel like work?
第二个问题是：在所有旨在让办公变得不像办公的干扰下，员工的工作效率能有多高？
The spectacular view from the Shard is less conducive to dreaming up a sales pitch (or a column) than it is to daydreaming.
比起帮助顾客构思推销口号(或专栏)，从碎片大厦看到的壮观景色反而更有利于白日做梦。
At Birch, boardgames occupy every horizontal surface, ready to draw out the procrastinator in you.
桦木酒店的每一个台面上都占据着棋盘游戏，随时准备诱发你的拖延症。
And once you are done stretching, that sourdough-baking class is a recipe to keep putting work on the back burner.
一旦你做完拉伸运动，面包烘焙课就会接着让你搁置工作。
Third, if you resist the temptation to temporise and get down to business, you may as well be at home or the office.
第三个问题是，如果你能抵抗住拖延的诱惑，开始认真工作，你还不如居家或在办公室里办公。
The kibbutz-like camaraderie which Birch (and other places like it cropping up everywhere) try so hard to evoke is, ironically, the very thing you miss by staying away from your office mates.
讽刺的是，桦木酒店(以及其他随处可见的类似场所)如此努力地想要唤起的集体农场式的友情，正是你远离办公室同事所避开的东西。
While you are updating that spreadsheet or answering emails, luxury hotels’ creature comforts scarcely register.
当你在更新电子表格或回复电子邮件时，几乎不会注意到豪华酒店的物质享受。
As with most material indulgences, a sense of vacuity descends once the novelty of the marble floors and stacks of fluffy towels wears off.
就像大多数物质享受一样，一旦大理石地板和成堆的蓬松毛巾带来的新鲜感消失，一种空虚感就会袭来。
The millennials and Gen-Zs meandering around Birch suggest that demand for its hip offerings exists.
桦木酒店周围有千禧一代和Z世代在闲逛，这表明对其新潮服务的需求是存在的。
And hoteliers are wise to work their assets in new ways as they cope with changes to their industry: business travel is, after all, unlikely to return to pre-pandemic patterns for a while, if ever.
酒店经营者在应对行业变化时，明智的做法是以新的方式利用自己的资产：毕竟商务旅行一段时间内不太可能回到疫情前的模式。
Just do not expect white-collar types to flock to hotels en masse for a hard day’s work.
只是别指望白领们会为了一天的辛苦工作而蜂拥至酒店。
Most of the Shangri-La’s daytime residents seemed to be couples seeking privacy, not executives keen to inspire and invigorate their pitches.
香格里拉的大多数日间住客似乎都是寻求隐私的情侣，而不是热衷于在构思推销口号时受到启发并精神焕发的高管。
As for Bartleby, you will find her at The Economist’s London head office or, failing that, her kitchen table.
至于巴托比，你会在《经济学人》伦敦总部找到她，如果找不到，去她家的厨房餐桌那里一定能找到。
来源：经济学人
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