We’ve been told that there’s no expectation for us to come back to the office on a fixed schedule and that we’ll only be expected to come in for company meetings and things like that… but then the next moment, we’re told that “we can’t wait to see more and more people coming back to the office and collaborating” and I just KNOW that they’re gonna gradually expect us to be in a lot of the time. There are no rules around it, but there’ll be an unwritten expectation.

20 out of 60+ people were in the office today and when I found out, I immediately burst into tears. I know that it’s fine for me to be at home right now, but I feel GUILTY. I feel like people will judge me.

I’m a fairly introverted person, but I love to socialise with my friends and meet new people sometimes. I also love going to crowded events like festivals and thrive off being around other people in those types of environments. However, I just cannot stand the office environment and culture and I realise that it used to make me physically ill.

Being in an open office environment with noise and people walking past all the time is exhausting. I tend to look quite serious when I’m concentrating on the computer, so I’m always conscious what people think of my face. Most of my colleagues are nice people and I’ve made the occasional friends at work throughout the years, but I’m really not one for forced socialising. I value genuine interactions and a lot of office interactions feel fake and a bit toxic sometimes. There’s this woman that’s always going on nights out with others from work, but I know for a fact that she bitches about most people she comes into contact with. Some people don’t mind playing the game and acting like friends with people that they bitch about, but I cannot and will not do it. After this pandemic, I crave a more peaceful and wholesome life and the office just doesn’t fit into that.

Needing to be around the same people in a crowded environment for 8 hours is absolutely exhausting. There’s nowhere to genuinely catch a breather. I don’t want to eat lunch with people. I don’t want to go for drinks with people I just spent 8 hours with or don’t care to be friends with.

It’s making me so depressed.