“In 2023, Matt Irby left a meeting for his job at Amazon with tears in his eyes.
The mid-30s senior program manager had recently clashed with his bosses over initiatives he had been tasked with developing. He felt constrained by the corporate environment of Amazon and felt like he couldn’t be himself.
After yet another difficult meeting, he’d had enough.
“I got out of the meeting and I was crying. I was like, ‘This is stupid. I just want to play,'” Irby said. “And I wrote it down on a Post-It note and I stuck it on my desktop.”
That note would eventually lead to Play Lounge and Cafe, a new eatery and community gathering place in Palm Springs whose game-themed events have been generating buzz throughout the city…”