DnWrd SpyRyl™

Look, I don't want to be a cynic and I know that I've never come up with an idea that's changed the world or anything, but Jabbrrbox™? It's a phone booth. Like, a fancy, members only one, but it's a still phone booth. I'll explain.

I can't decide if we're coming full circle, or just
passing phone booths again on our downward spiral. 

Above: The 'Fernsprechkiosk,'
which would be the last good idea
Germany would have for a while.

I did a quick wikipedia search, which I'm pretty sure makes me an expert, and the phone booth was invented in Berlin back in the nineteenth century and was called a 'Fernsprechkiosk' because German is adorable. You payed a fee and then could talk to someone on the phone in relative quiet and privacy for an amount of time. Cool. The idea eventually caught on and phone booths were everywhere in the world for a hundred years. Like, a hundred goddamn years. And then cell phones came along and phone booths went the way of polio and civility. Sad story, march of progress, whatever. But then Brian Hackathorn™, a businessperson who found it difficult to to find a quiet place to work on business things in between business meetings in Manhattan came along and had an idea. An idea that some German had over a hundred years ago, but still, an idea.

But Hackathorn had something most people with ideas don't: access to start-up capital. Well, that and a willingness to look potential investors in the eye and sell them on bringing back phone booths.

"Wait, hang on, hear me out: it's a phone
booth, except people pay us to use it..."

-Brian Hackathorn, innovating

"Could you hurry it up? When I'm old I 
want to reminisce about how great the
50's were and you're not making it easy."

-People waiting to use the phone

Anyway, he found some partners, some airports willing to give them a try (including Laguardia), and then slapped a stupid, deliberately misspelled, trademark-able name on it and-yeah, Jabbrrbox®. Two b's, two r's. I don't care how good these people are at start-upping, you just can't do that to the english language. Anyway, in fairness it's not exactly like a phone booth, like, you have to bring your own phone so these things are more about being a temporary office with wifi. To use one you have to sign up and then schedule a chunk of time which I suppose is a little more civilized than waiting for a phone booth to free up.

"The design aesthetic we went with was:
what if you could crap in the Apple Store?"

-Jabbrrbox design team

Speaking of civilized, you're probably wondering how long one of these can be out in the wild before being used as either an impromptu sex booth or say, a toilet. Fortunately, JbbarBrx (what? it's not a real word in the first place) has an FAQ to answer these questions. According to the site, while the box can fit two people, it's not recommended. Which, I'm not hearing a hard 'no.' As for the toilet thing, Jabbadab says that the cleanliness is up to the members meaning if the one you reserved is filled with the unspeakable, they'll try and set you up in a new one. Interestingly the company doesn't seem to take any responsibility for hosing these things out should the worst happen. Huh, I guess that's LaGuardia International's janitorial staff's problem.

Yes, I know I said all mobile games are
objective garbage, and I stand by that,
but still, take a break once in awhile.

But I don't know, is it me or is there a whiff of, I don't know, twenty-first century classism that comes along with this idea? Maybe I'm just projecting my own gut reaction to any start-up with a gibberish name, but the idea that people will pay for a private space to work away from the rabble at Starbucks or whatever feels a little elitist not to mention workaholic. Sorry, I hate that term too. Like, workahol isn't a thing. But the point is can't a forty minute layover at the airport be time to catch up on some shitty Dean Koontz novel or a mobile game?

I know time is money or whatever, but we kind of live in a stressed-out, frustrated world full of divisiveness and anger where our only outlet is to be rude on Twitter. Maybe trying to cram work into every waking moment of our lives isn't necessarily the best way to cope? But I've never started a start-up, so what do I know?

"Need a quiet place to work while away from your office? Sign up
for Jabbrrbox, and work uninterrupted until the sweet release of death."

-Jabbrrbox's perhaps somewhat 

ill-advised marketing strategy