Even at the United Nations, where legend has it that the building was designed so that there could be no corner offices, the expanse of glass in individual offices is said to be a dead giveaway as to rank. Five windows are excellent, one window not so great.

Nemy uses a wry, observational tone to puncture the idealized image of egalitarian bureaucracy. The United Nations is invoked as a symbol of international cooperation and, by “legend,” architectural equality—no corner offices implying no obvious spatial hierarchy. Yet the quote argues that status reasserts itself through subtler markers: the amount of glass and the number of windows. The humor (“excellent… not so great”) underscores how quickly people read rank into physical surroundings, even in institutions that aspire to neutrality. More broadly, it suggests that organizations cannot fully eliminate prestige economies; they merely shift them from overt privileges to coded, legible signals.