"One of the things I wanted to sort of like inspire people with that worked here is you always feel beautiful while you're here." Those are the words of the chief interior designer himself.

Bottom line: this company crapped on itself. You're deluding yourself if you truly believe office managers are driving decisions to waste time and money on stupid sh*t like beautiful noise panels.

It's easy to criticize a figure who has made mistakes over his/her values that are unrelated to those mistakes. It seems that may be happening here.

He doesn't actually say he bought the panels. In that sentence he's talking about something he thinks is a company value.