One day before work, Shaun Martin made a moist unpleasant discovery.
The Austin, Texas, software development manager had just finished a workout and hit the shower in his office to clean off before settling into work. Then the 32-year old reached for his navy blue towel.
“The towel was damp. Worse than damp,” he says, describing the moment he first realized a co-worker had been secretly using his terry cloth.
The latest homey amenity to crop up in the workplace, office showers are going mainstream, ushering in a new era of intimacy and awkwardness among co-workers. Many workers have mastered the perils of the corporate gym locker room—studiously avoiding eye contact to avert a glimpse of the boss in boxer briefs—but the showers near their cubicles have raised a host of new issues, from purloined towels to hot-water hogs.
Showering at Brooks Running Co. has become more of a relay race than an exercise in relaxation, thanks to timers in the Seattle-based apparel and footwear company’s showers. The showers shut off after four minutes, and to deter an employee from doubling the length of a rinse, don’t turn on again for five minutes.
Designed to conserve water, the showers have led to unexpected corporate team-building. To save time, a group of male runners performs a feat nearly as challenging as their six-to-eight-mile lunchtime workouts: One at a time, they hop in for 30-second bursts, giving a yell when they’re about to step out of the shower. The timer’s beeps count down the final five seconds, adding an element of pressure and competition to the midday break.
“It was definitely a race against the clock,” Michael Chinchar, a 26-year-old corporate responsibility specialist at the company, says of a recent rinse, when he jumped in with 20 seconds to go—leaving little time for shampoo, much less conditioner.
“We all just kind of do the necessities,” he says.
ENLARGEColleagues dry off in the locker room afterward. There is a separate facility for women.
Corporate showers of yore were often tucked away in the basement and “pretty dank,” says Johnathan Sandler, a director of workplace strategy at design and architecture firm Gensler. Today, they’re in high demand, even in buttoned-up fields like law, as companies try to project a healthful, youthful image and enable workers to rinse off after biking to work or get clean after a midday Pilates class.
The new corporate shower spaces aim to be Zen-like, modern and fun. David Galullo and Cory Sistrunk, principals with design firm Rapt Studio, created outdoor teak showers for a Southern California office building.
Depending on the finishes, designers and architects say facilities can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $150,000 per shower.
At showerless companies, employees sometimes improvise. Kevin Meany, CEO of marketing firm BFG Communications, noticed water running out from under a nearby fence when he arrived at the company’s Hilton Head, S.C., office one July morning. At first fearing a pipe had burst, he then made out a person holding a hose over his head. It was a BFG art director, clad in boxer shorts, rinsing off after a long bike ride.
Josh Barrett, who now works at another firm, says that before he discovered the hose, he used to bring a wet sponge in a Ziploc bag to work to clean himself up after morning rides and surfing sessions. “The hose was quite an upgrade,” he said.
Not long after, Mr. Meany scouted additional office space with a shower.
Marketing-technology startup TellApart Inc. built a shower in 2014, but decided against offering towel service. Jason Gatoff, the company’s head of marketing, soon noticed employees hunched at their desks with wet hair. Others broke into the company’s stock of T-shirts, emblazoned with the TellApart logo, to use as makeshift towels.
Bosses decided the solution lay across the street, at a gym where the company has a corporate membership. For a while, Mr. Gatoff borrowed towels for himself and co-workers, later returning used ones. The gym never caught on, but TellApart has since bought its own towels.
Management is prepared for additional contingencies. CEO Josh McFarland crafted a sign he affixed to the shower door, encouraging colleagues to not use the facility as a urinal.
“With a benefit comes responsibility,” says Peter Post, the managing director of the Emily Post Institute. While part of the office, the shower zone should not be treated as a workspace, he advises.
“This is not the time to waylay your boss or even your co-worker who’s standing here in their towel,” he says.
Realizing that some people do their best thinking in the shower, online shipping services company uShip Inc., where Mr. Martin works, recently installed a notepad with waterproof paper on the shower’s tile walls.
Meg Garrett, the company’s vice president for human resources, acknowledges the shower setup might strike some as a bit too close for comfort.
“You, at some point in time, were naked in the same room as your co-workers,” she says. “If you think about that in its simplest form, it’s a little weird.”
Mr. Martin, the worker who discovered a colleague had been using his towel, rarely uses the work shower these days, saying the incident left him “miffed.”
He never confronted the perpetrator, he says. “ ‘Violated’ is too strong of a word,” he says. Still, “it’s gross.”
Managers at technology firm Coveo Inc. were puzzled after discovering salt and sand in a company shower last January. A trail of drips led them from the shower to the bike rack, where a bike was wet.
A worker had been washing his ride in an effort to remove buildup from Quebec City’s wintry streets. His bosses thought it was strange—especially considering the size of the shower stall. They asked him not to use the shower for that again. “I still wonder how he got the whole bike in the shower,” says Marc Sanfacon, a senior vice president.
Some office showers were better in theory than in practice. San Francisco beauty company Yes To Inc. employees were “enamored” of the idea of a shower, says CEO Joy Chen, prompting her to negotiate with the firm’s landlord to have one installed in a new office. But the only time Ms. Chen recalls it being used was to bathe a worker’s puppy that had an accident in the office.
In 2013, the company asked its landlord to remove the shower and put in a washer-dryer instead. Employees might not have wanted to clean themselves at work, but they have no problem bringing in their dirty laundry, Ms. Chen says.
