WeWork Umbrella

About

WeWork Umbrella refers to a viral incident in which an umbrella fell inside a WeWork private office space in a certain way prohibiting reentry through the sliding door. The story and a picture of the phenomena was shared to Twitter in September 2019 and was met with thousands of suggestions on how to get back in.

Origin

On September 17th, 2019, @NeerajKA^[1] tweeted, "My friend’s entire company is locked out of their WeWork office because an umbrella fell, jamming the door. No one can figure it out. It’s been like this for 2 days" (shown below). The tweet gained over 142,200 likes and 26,100 retweets in two days.

Spread

On September 17th, 2019, Twitter user @DocKilmer^[7] replied to @NeerajKA's tweet with an image of a mallet captioned "Solved" (shown below). The tweet gained over 3,300 likes and 90 retweets in two days. Twitter user @Massvwatches^[8] also responded saying, "2 days? Is everyone that works there completely incompetent? None of you can operate a wire or slim jim? No millennial there capable of looking up a locksmith on their fancy phones? I would fire every one of you if I owned this buisinuss…wtf" (shown below, right). The tweet accumulated over 650 likes and 20 retweets in two days.

Later that night, @NeerajKA^[2] responded by saying that, "The number of people who have said they should just break the glass today is astonishing. There’s nothing important in there. Its 2019. Computers are portable now. Work just moved to a different office. No one is going to smash a pane of glass if they can avoid it" (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 4,200 likes and 100 retweets in two days. He also responded by saying, "And yes they tried the wire thing. It didn’t work."^[3] Redditor Adam4nt reposted the original tweet to r/perfectfit^[5] and received over 29,000 points (94% upvoted) in two days. The next day, @NeerajKA^[4] gave an update from in the form of a conversation screenshot from his friend telling him that they went through the ceiling to move the umbrella (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 7,200 likes ad 300 retweets in a day. On September 18th, Vice^[6] published an article titled, "It Was My Umbrella That Locked Us Out of the WeWork" announcing that the umbrella owner is named Mike Ponticelli who recounted that "Tuesday evening, around 6pm, someone cut through the floor of the fifth floor and into our fourth floor office. Then they used a bit of wire to pry loose the umbrella. There’s still a hole in the ceiling now, about the size of a gherkin."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References