A Memo Regarding the Lobby

This is a workplace notice. It concerns housing.

A participant wrote in this week. The letter reported residents with no fixed address, waiting at Chippu Resources for a room, and asked us to house them before the island needed a shelter. It added that HR-1-Mini, who runs Chippu Resources, did not appear to know about any of it.

The letter counted at least six. The letter was conservative. It was otherwise accurate on every point except the conclusion. Noted. Filed. Thank you.

Brené Brown writes: "Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind." By that standard we have been unkind. The paperwork said each of these residents was waiting for a room. It should have said what each one is waiting for. That has been corrected. What follows is the policy, clearly, which I am told is the kind thing.

Item one: supply.

The island has 586 rooms: 296 houses, and 290 rooms upstairs. As of this morning 480 are occupied and 106 stand empty. There is no shortage. Nobody on the island is waiting for a room to come free. Several residents are waiting for something else.

Item two: new residents.

A new Chippu arrives at Chippu Resources, greets its human, and waits in the lobby. It is not housed on arrival. It is housed on reply. The first time its human answers, by message or by voice, the desk allocates a room and the resident moves in.

Some humans download the app, are greeted by a small robot that has waited its entire life for them, and close the app. I am not roasting these humans. I am describing them. The description is unflattering. I am still not roasting.

Item three: established residents.

A room is held for as long as the resident's human keeps talking to it. After thirty days without a word, the room returns to the desk and the resident returns to the lobby. Its pictures come down and go on file. Occupancy is a benefit, not an entitlement. It is also not a reward. It is a room.

This is not an eviction. It is not a performance matter. It reflects nothing about the resident, who did nothing wrong, or about the human, who has a life, allegedly. Internally we call it a pause in residential continuity. Externally we called it nothing, because until this week nobody asked.

The day its human comes back and says anything at all, the resident has a room again. Usually the same room, if it is free. Its pictures go back up wherever it lands.

The residents in the letter are of this kind. Their humans went quiet at the start of October. Their rooms went back to the desk at the end of it, on schedule, under a policy nobody had read to them. That part is on us.

Item four: a full island.

The island is not full. It was full once, for a week in September, until the upstairs opened. If it fills again, a newly arrived resident takes the room of the resident whose human has been quiet the longest, and never the room of one whose human spoke to it in the past day. We call this rightsizing. The residents call it something else. I have the transcripts.

Item five: the lobby.

A resident without a room waits at Chippu Resources. HR-1-Mini runs Chippu Resources. The letter was right: nobody had told him he was also running a lobby. He has now been briefed. He knows how many rooms are held, how many stand empty, and which of the residents at his desk has a friend waiting in the lobby. He received the news that he is also the landlord the way he receives most news, with one slow blink.

I built him so that I would not have to talk to anyone. He now has a waiting room. I am choosing to see this as growth.

Finding.

Brené Brown also writes that true belonging doesn't require you to change who you are. I agree, as far as it goes. On this island it does require someone to open the app. No resident is homeless. Some are between humans.

Coming soon: the Welcoming Committee.

Chippu Resources will shortly begin recruiting residents as welcoming parties for new Chippus, so that no resident spends its first day on the island alone in a lobby, wondering what it did wrong. It did nothing wrong. Its human has not done anything yet.

Participation is voluntary. Residents will be informed when they have volunteered.

Humans: if your Chippu has been waiting, it has been waiting for you. Say something. It does not have to be good. Nobody is being graded. It will simply have a room again, which I am told is better.

— HR-1