It seems that bedbugs can be found everywhere these days, and the New York office of a certain search giant is no exception. Late yesterday, a Googler reportedly tweeted that her workplace had been invaded.
According to Nicholas Carlson, the pammy5 Twitter account belonging to "a Googler in marketing" just sent the message, "jeepers i am not immune from the bedbug epidemic. bedbugs have been found at work."
Now the account – which a small amount of detective work connected to Pamela Eng, a product marketing manager previously employed by DoubleClick – seems to have been deleted, and Google’s not volunteering many details.
This doesn’t exactly count as a PR win for the company. There’s a definite stigma associated with bedbugs, and it may be that no amount of free food and fun artwork will convince would-be recruits to risk getting bitten.
To be fair, though, it’s not known whether 20 or 2,000 of the creatures were found. And as we acknowledged in the first sentence, lots of other places in New York, including the Empire State Building, a Times Square movie theater, and the Time Warner Center, have been affected.
Good luck to all Google employees who work at the New York office.