My first interview at Summit was way back in ’03 when they were still in Pioneer. Though the office resembled an old warehouse back then, it still felt like home to the talented minds who were there from the very beginning. Think no Internet and people sharing computers. From a lone magazine to twenty-five in a decade — the accomplishment is nothing short of amazing.
If there’s one thing sadder than leaving your former office, it’s realizing you need just one more look at it before they start tearing everything down. It was almost 5PM when a former officemate told me they were almost done packing.
Here’s how the office looked last Friday. *sniff*
If you’ve never been inside the Galleria Summit office, you should know there weren’t any windows. Regardless if the sky was falling Galleria ceilings were leaking, natural calamities were not enough to postpone photoshoots. Even if smoke from the food court found its way into the office during lunch, this did not stop people from meeting all those unreasonable tight production deadlines (Peace Intet 
). Even the exposed pipes overhead were used as runways for the occasional rat race. Believe it or not, all of these things were not inconveniences.
I just picked up the June issue of Men’s Health yesterday, and saw a familiar name on page 50 (name not worth mentioning, nor will I even bother linking to the actual posts). Needless to say, I would have been against the feature if I was still working there. Below are a few posts from the guy’s blog.
“And if this methane-gases-due-to-human-waste theory proves itself to be true, considering that this is Ayala Malls, the country’s supposedly most prestigious real estate development corporation that supposedly prioritizes issues such as these, can you imagine what the sewage system of less “prestigious” developments might look like? Just think about what horrors lurk underneath MegaMall or worse, Robinson’s Malate and Galleria. People of Summit Media, you know what I’m talking about. The underground parking lot of your offices in Galleria really are Dante’s seven levels of hell. And I’m already being kind.”
Here’s one more…
“First of all, the construction materials you use for them (specifically Robinson’s Place and Galleria) are alarmingly substandard. It only takes one look at the crumbling parking ramps of Robinson’s Place, the cracks on the concrete walls, and the greasy stinky sweatshop conditions of Summit Media in Galleria to make one wonder how much you scrimped in order to keep your profit margin up.”
Much like what was said about the old Pioneer office, these are the small things you look back to when thinking about how big a company has become. People may have come and gone, but the fact still remains — people worked their asses off regardless of what the office was like.
Here’s to the new Summit Office! My message to the guy above? Dante’s seven levels of hell now has windows.
