I’m sure most Americans have heard about this whole “work from home” racket. I get that we needed it during peaks of the pandemic, but people need to put on their big boy pants and head back to the office. Sure, working remotely cuts out that commute to the office, but what’s another half hour to and from? And yeah, studies show an increase in productivity when working from home, but who’s counting? When did we stop caring about office culture? And what if I just really like water coolers? It’s glaringly obvious that the office is the place to be, and here are five of the things from the office I’m missing right now.
- Eavesdropping on my colleagues. If I’m working from home, I can’t “overhear” my coworker Janet on all of her personal phone calls. I don’t have the most exciting personal life, not a lot of drama, so I like to think I’m living vicariously through Janet. I’d get quality entertainment before she’d eventually notice and be like “Why have you been standing there for twelve minutes?” and “It’s rude to listen to other people’s conversations.” If she’s going to talk that loud she can’t expect me not to listen. Now I’ll never get to know what happened at that brunch with her in-laws.
- Using the industrial printer for personal reasons. It’s just so much easier to use the printers they have at the office because they can print, like, a thousand pages at a time. When my roommate lost her cat and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I ran over it by accident, I was able to print almost 200 lost animal flyers in full color in under fifteen minutes. Plus, I never have to worry about paying for new ink cartridges.
- Stealing food from the fridge in the breakroom. I’m not the best chef, so most of my lunches are pretty boring, and I usually don’t have the energy to run down to the deli and get a sandwich. With such a big staff, there was usually something yummy to grab, as long as I didn’t take from the same person too many times. Besides, if Carolyn really wanted her organic nonfat vanilla yogurt, she should’ve put her name on it.
- My coworker that kept asking me if I wanted to check out his band. He would kind of appear out of thin air with a flyer and everything, and once he even offered me merch. I always turned him down because he has a pedo mustache and that’s not cute. Disclaimer: I always found it super annoying and creepy, but after two years without interaction I would be really flattered.
- My boss walking around the office without shoes on. Ted’s been doing it since he transferred from corporate, and now that he’s in charge of hiring and firing, everybody’s too scared to tell him to stop. Honestly, I’m a huge fan. Sometimes he would be wearing fun socks, and I can’t hate on that. To be fair, it wasn’t great when he would sit back and put his feet up on the desk in the middle of a meeting. But at least I know I can do casual Fridays in sweatpants without judgement.
I think it’s pretty clear that there are certain things you just can’t get when working from home. After all, how are you supposed to create an office culture when you aren’t in the office! It’s a waste of time trying to change the status quo, it’s the status quo for a reason, and ultimately, we need a return to normalcy. Let’s hear it for the soul-crushing 9 to 5!
