Perhaps it’d just be cheaper to implement the Coughing Code.
Man I loved Get Smart. I on the first four seasons didn’t bother with the fifth.
I would guess that your personal experience with evergreens is not extensive. I do stuff periodically out back of the garage, and this time of year, I hear cones hitting the roof rather often. On the tree, or on the ground, the cones tend to be vewy quiet, but the function of the cones is that they do not stay on the tree. Not to mention the damn squirrels, which sometimes tear the cones apart for tasty seeds, in a way that is not silent.
Oh, I doubt that Mr. Smart.
Would you beleive… about a Boy Scout with rabies?
*Critics say Mr. Pruitt has gone to unusual lengths to operate in secrecy at the E.P.A., where employees report he is often accompanied by armed guards even inside the agency
New York Times
Pruitt, for his part, has essentially beefed up the agency’s personal security detail that served past administrators. The detail now includes about 18 people to cover round-the-clock needs and his frequent travel schedule.*
I believe the whole ethos is an elaborate melange of performance art, focus-shifting and high comedy by Donald Trump.
By hiring ninnies like Sessions, Pruitt, Pence and the rest and directing them to acting all dementedlike, he avoids public scrutiny, as befits a shy man. His clowns tumble and the ring-master counts the receipts for Trump Inc…
Eh. They just installed a bunch (like 100+) of these office privacy booths at our office. They’re nice; imported from Finland. They also cost ~$18k/each for a baseline model. Probably pushing $25k with furniture, phones, etc. Good office furniture ain’t cheap.
I watched a lot of Get Smart on Nick at Nite back in the day.
So… they get rid of a lot of little private offices, make big open-plan offices, then fill those open-plan offices with dinky little private offices ?
Truly, this is a World of Wonders.
You have grasped it exactly. Except that there aren’t enough of the little private offices.
The vaunted “collaboration” which was to have ensued is damaged slightly when everyone either books a meeting room, grabs a pod, or just works form home whenever they want to get actual work done.
In your example it’s the roof you are hearing, not the cone. Cones are always silent, but the things they come in contact with may not be. It’s a rookie mistake, and as such is understandable, but a mistake nonetheless. 
Now hand me my shoe, I have to make a call.
One of the morning talk shows did a blurb on this yesterday, I think, and they showed a clip of on of the the Cone of Silence scenes from Get Smart. Being of that certain age, it was the first thing I thought of when I heard about this.
Reported for link fixing.
Can we take a step back from this and settle down?
This sounds like a secure comm room like the thousands of which exist all over the government. They have to be built to certain requirements, and not being able to hear a conversation outside the room is an obvious one. You can’t make classified calls outside of such a room.
Why does the EPA chief need to make classified calls? I don’t know, I can’t think of a reason offhand but I don’t know the sprawl that is the EPA. Maybe they’re being consulted on secure DoD facilities. Also, a lot of non-classified work areas end up getting a secure comm room put it if there are frequent visits from DVs who might need to conduct official business while they’re there. It doesn’t seem ridiculous that people visiting the head of the EPA might need to make a classified call now and again.
Lastly, nitpicking the government over a $25,000 expense was obnoxious when Fox News was doing it, why do we need to respond in kind? A high ranking government executive spending $25k for a secure comm room seems, at first blush, like normal government business.
If that is in fact the case, why do they need it now? If the EPA is engaged in classified activity, you would think that they had been since 1972. There appears to be more under this story than what we are hearing.
That is like a “look how stupid you were being you nitpicking assholes” kind of deal.
I don’t know. I don’t know how things are going in the EPA, but the DoD is building a lot more of these types of things because they’re taking information security a lot more seriously lately.
The quote in the OP mentions that there’s already a room like this on another floor in the building. Maybe it’s always busy. Maybe it’s old and need to be renovated. Maybe there was an internal organizational change that prompted some remodeling and now it’s harder to get to that room. Maybe every single EPA administrator for the last 20 years really, really wanted a secure comm room in their office but didn’t think it was worth the construction dust.
When Obama’s last EPA chief comes out and says this is a clear sign of something shady, then maybe I’ll care. But at the moment there’s a lot of conjecture over something that seems relatively normal in 2017 government operations.
Yes, I think we all remember Michelle Obama graciously saying, “When they go low, we patiently wait 8 years so we can also go low.”
Very few people are as classy as the Obama’s.