Disney HQ Has a Mouse Problem. No, Really!
Disney HQ is overrun with mice. And this is real, not a Mickey and Minnie Mouse joke.
Life has imitated art in a way that some Disney employees probably don’t find very funny. Here’s what happened.
Too Many Mice Even for Disney
According to Page Six, The Walt Disney Company’s New York headquarters suffered an infestation that’s a bit too on-the-nose.
Workers at Disney’s 66th Street location experienced an awkward afternoon on Monday.
Management sent their staff a message that all Disney employees at the East Coast headquarters needed to evacuate the building “IMMEDIATELY!”
Apparently, local mice in the area felt a compulsion to visit their unofficial home, Disney.
After all, since the late 1920s, Disney has celebrated the stories of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Mortimer Mouse, among others.
This place loves its mice, right? Well, I guess that love is more theoretical than applicable to an office setting.
Disney officials used some fairly frantic wording, and it’s pretty funny as long as you weren’t in the building that day.
Here’s the Email Warning
Page Six attained a copy of the email. It says:
“We have been made aware of persistent pest issues on the 5th floor of (the Disney HQ at 77 W. 66th St.).
Risk management and facilities teams are aware of these issues and working quickly to resolve them. As a result, we ask that you refrain from working from the 5th floor EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.”
The hilarious part is that the message ends with a contrite, “Thank you all for the notifications.”
That’s management’s way of acknowledging that the Disney employees were already acutely aware of the problem and messaging their bosses repeatedly.
In case you’re wondering, Disney couldn’t fix the problem in a day, but it didn’t give its workers the next day off.
Instead, the impacted team, most of whom work in Disney’s advertising department, were asked to request office space in a different part of the building.
Apparently, this part of Disney HQ was the only one where the mice wanted to infiltrate. Oh, and there were lots of fleas, too. It sounds pretty gross.
Disney also gave its employees the opportunity to work from home if so inclined.
Personally, I wouldn’t go back in that building until somebody used a blue light to prove that everything had been debugged, de-moused, and sanitized.
How Did This Happen?
Page Six provides intriguing speculation about what caused the mice to move into Disney HQ.
Disney had previously sold this building to Silverstein five years ago.
However, Disney has rented some of the space from Silverstein in the interim.
The company is currently building a new headquarters at Four Hudson Square.
At the moment, neither Disney nor Silverstein has any incentive to perform upkeep on the building because it’ll eventually be demolished.
Once Disney departs for good, Silverstein will perform the demo and then build a new high-rise here.
Until then, Disney employees should familiarize themselves with mouse traps, no matter how anti-Mickey they might seem.
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