Barstool's internal office politics spilled out into public view this weekend, and it started with Big Cat himself weighing in on the chaos. The comment came off casual, almost gleeful, but it confirmed something staffers had already been buzzing about: the New York and Chicago offices are back at war, and this time there's video evidence.
Big Cat's now-viral line about the office chaos, caught live on the Barstool Yak podcast.
The fuse got lit by VivaTV, the internal camera crew that seems to catch everything happening around the office whether people want it caught or not. Footage of Dante and Chuck Naso reportedly got pulled before Dante could delete it, which is its own kind of confirmation that whatever was said, it mattered. Meanwhile, staffers noted that Gaz had conveniently just landed back in New York in time to catch the fallout live, cubicles full of Star Wars figures and all.
The behind-the-scenes VivaTV clip of Dante and Chuck Naso that kicked off the latest round of office beef.
Chuck Naso wasted no time turning himself into the main character of the saga. Clips floating around have him getting roasted as "a great landscaper" and, more pointedly, dropping the line that the office is "just boring right now" -- exactly the kind of bait that gets an NY-vs-Chicago thread rolling on Barstool Twitter. Whether it was a shot at his own building or a subtle dig at New York, people took it and ran.
@VivaLaStool @DanteTheDon @ChuckNaso “I think the office is just boring right now” -@ChuckNaso 😳
This isn't a new rivalry, either. The Barstool NYC-Chicago dynamic has been a running bit for years, with staffers on both sides trading jabs about which building actually runs the company. So when Tommy Smokes posted that the New York office was suddenly "back on top," it read less like a random flex and more like a direct response fired into an ongoing beef.
Tommy Smokes claiming New York reclaimed the throne amid the office drama.
Chicago's side of the building didn't take it lying down. A wave of staffers, from Brandon Walker to Kenjac to Clem, all posted some version of the same joke about how great it is to live in Chicago because you can just go chill on the beach whenever you want, photos included. It's a bit, not a real estate pitch, but the sheer number of people running the same gag in the same window says the Chicago crew felt the shots and wanted receipts of their own lifestyle superiority, lake views and all.
None of this is likely to end with an actual office merger or a corporate memo, but that's kind of the point. Barstool's whole appeal has always been built on personalities airing things out in public that most companies would bury in an HR file, and this beef is a prime example. Big Cat called it a shit storm because that's exactly what it is -- watch for whether Dante or Chuck Naso address the leaked footage directly, because right now the internet has more receipts than either of them probably wants floating around.