"It's not necessarily your boss telling you to do yoga, but yourself thinking that if you don't do yoga, if you don't do these networking events, you might not be as good as you would like at your job."
The wellness class ends.
Everyone rolls up their mats, checks their phones, and heads back to their desks. Productivity restored. Focus recharged. Another tool in the productivity arsenal.
But what happens when yoga stops being about you and starts being about your quarterly targets?
Dr. Adèle Gruen has spent years immersed in coworking spaces, observing how community activities evolve into business development opportunities.
Her research reveals something uncomfortable: the very things that should restore us—yoga, networking events, communal meals—are being weaponised for work.
As Junior Professor at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL, Adèle's 2021 paper "Customer Work Practices and the Productive Third Place" mapped how coffee shops became work accelerators.
Her latest research on "Consumptive Work in Coworking" exposes how coworking spaces turn everything—from baking classes to meditation—into productivity tools.
It isn't about corporate wellness programmes imposed from above. It's about the pressure we put on ourselves to turn every moment into a work opportunity. Adèle calls it "neo-normative alienation"—when you become your productivity overseer.
Currently researching urban foraging ("I like weird stuff and I like people who do unexpected things"), Adèle embeds herself in the communities she studies. She attends workshops, learns skills, and spends hours understanding how people work and live.
This conversation reveals the collision between two worlds: the traditional third place, which built community through leisure, and the emerging "productive third place," where everything becomes work.
For coworking operators, it's a mirror.
For community builders, it serves as a warning.
For anyone who has ever felt guilty for not networking at a yoga class, it's validation.
Timeline Highlights
[01:29] The research curiosity that drives everything: "I like weird stuff and I like people who do unexpected things"
[06:26] Why academic literature got third places wrong: "We didn't buy this discourse that people who worked in cafés were only silencing it"
[09:52] The birth of "customer-workers": "We played around with cost worker or work customer... how do you do when there is no word to describe what you're seeing?"
[12:56] Professional identity performance: "They advertise themselves as working in that space... they benefit from the imaginaries of that coworking space brand"
[15:28] Bernie's realisation about the productivity machine: "It feels like you go to work, you go through the door, and you never have to leave"
[17:57] The self-imposed pressure trap: "It's not necessarily your boss telling you to do yoga, but yourself thinking that if you don't do yoga... you might not be as good"
[18:49] The burnout solution that creates more burnout: "The solution was to propose more meditation and wellness within the space. It's a never-ending circle"
[20:10] community as marketplace: "Community enables them to sell better... the bigger the coworking space, the bigger the community, the more it resembles a market"
[22:14] The proximity economy: "70% of people in coworking spaces said their business came from the people sitting near them"
[24:46] work as lifestyle aspiration: "At least your work is more fun and you're not stuck behind a desk"
[26:19] The exclusion problem: "A lot of people cannot engage in after-work networking events, especially if they involve alcohol"
[27:16] What's next: "Part-time consultant, part-time farmer... people who work differently in the new ways of working"
The Customer-Worker Revolution
The coffee shop wars began with a simple observation that academics had overlooked entirely.
"We didn't buy this discourse that was saying basically that people who worked in cafés were only silencing it and being very detrimental to the cafés," Adèle explains. The research establishment viewed these laptop warriors as parasites destroying the social fabric of third places.
But something more complex was happening. Ray Oldenburg's "third place"—spaces dedicated to socialising between home and work—was evolving. Customer-workers weren't just exploiting coffee shops; they were transforming them into "productive third places" that actively cater to work whilst maintaining social energy.
The language gap reveals the shift: "We played around with cost worker or work customer... how do you do when there is no word to describe what you're seeing in your data?"
When you need to invent words, you know something fundamental is changing.
The Professional Identity Marketplace
Here's where coworking spaces become something more sophisticated than laptop squatting.
"They advertise themselves as working in that space, and some of the coworking spaces have a very powerful brand," Adèle notes. "Independent workers benefit from the imaginaries of that coworking space brand that trickles down to their own business."
Bernie recognises this immediately: "I know people that have said they work in some of those places... they will go, 'Oh, we're in the same office as X company' or 'Yes, we're in the same building as the BBC.'"
This isn't proximity bragging—it's strategic identity construction. Coworking spaces serve as platforms for professional legitimacy, particularly for independent workers who lack traditional institutional credentials.
The brand association works both ways. Members gain credibility from prestigious coworking brands, whilst spaces cultivate reputations that attract high-value members. It's an upward spiral of perceived status.
But it creates exclusions based on who can afford premium spaces and who understands how to leverage brand associations for business development.
The Consumptive Work Trap
Bernie's realisation cuts to the heart of the transformation: "It feels like you go to work, you go through the door, and you never have to leave. There's this industrial productivity machine going on."
This is "consumptive work"—the strategic use of consumption activities for work purposes. Yoga classes become focus sessions. Baking workshops become networking events. Communal meals become business development opportunities.
"When they do yoga, it's also about finding productivity and focus. When you attend a baking class, it's also for networking, business development," Adèle explains. "What we are showing is that when you take work into these leisure activities or wellness activities, it becomes work, and then you're not doing it for its own sake."
The psychology is insidious. It's not corporate mandates forcing you to network over cocktails. It's the pressure you put on yourself.
"It's not necessarily your boss telling you to do yoga, but yourself thinking that if you don't do yoga, if you don't do these networking events, you might not be as good as you would like at your job."
This is "neo-normative alienation"—when you become your productivity overseer.
The Burnout Feedback Loop
The solution to burnout in coworking spaces reveals the depth of the problem.
"Some of the coworking managers were very much aware of the burnout situation," Adèle observes. "But the solution was to propose more meditation and wellness within the space. It's a never-ending circle."
More wellness becomes more work. More community pressure becomes more pressure. The very ...
