The piece: "ZOMG that's a $6,000 office furnishing budget per employee!"; Also the piece: "Over 10 years, and that includes various moving and storage costs inc

The piece: "ZOMG that's a $6,000 office furnishing budget per employee!"; Also the piece: "Over 10 years, and that includes various moving and storage costs including things like emptying a building of all furniture before renovations begin, and that includes stuff like conference room tables and who knows what else, so it's not like employees personally got the benefit of anywhere near that $600/yr" (and yes, I checked, the $6,000 is the over-10-years figure, not per year, which would be way too much, plus they're dividing by a number of employees that's significantly lower than what they had for some of those years) Yes, some furniture pieces are very expensive. No, that's not always unjustifiable. Nice furniture that works well and will last continues to cost actual money—compare it to Ikea or Ashley Furniture or whatever, and it'll always look expensive. It's also possible they're under restrictions, explicit or implicit, about where they can spend that money—your budget-tier options are going to be limited or nonexistent if you're restricted to American companies, for instance. Given these figures, what they were not doing was giving any significant percentage of their employees insanely-nice furniture. I'm also curious how many of the top-end items the piece singles out were for political appointees' offices. That could be corruption, sure, but it's a very different kind of issue from the EPA itself having a spending problem. Meanwhile, $600/employee/yr seems well within the bounds of normal. Piece is bullshit. [EDIT] it's also—and this was the most credible-looking source I could find for this, mind you—some guy "reporting" on figures that an organization he heads came up with. Check the about-the-author bit at the bottom. So. There's that. [EDIT EDIT] I just checked Herman Miller's price book. That $15,000 conference room table the article calls out (inattentive reader: "Oh my god, my dining room table only cost $300 at Ikea, that's insane!")? Based on what I'm seeing, it must have been enormous. Think "20 feet long" enormous. Tables that big are expensive. Are there cheaper ones? Yes. Are 100% of tables that size—which are in limited demand—going to seem absurdly expensive when presented this way? Also yes.