The question I have realised that after two years of working from home I cannot work in an office. My manager has recently mandated that we all work from the office on certain days of the week. I now spend half an hour each way crammed into a smelly, dirty train. I started this job during the pandemic, so I was nervous to go into the office and meet my colleagues. Well, my worst fears came true, because on my first day, the first colleague I met tried to get me fired. He said I wasn’t wearing my lanyard and reported it to my boss.
Since then I’ve met the rest of the team and I experienced a not insubstantial amount of sectarianism and sexism. But it’s not just that. I now find I’m hypersensitive to any noise. I’m acutely sensitive to people chewing with their mouths open, slurping soup and gossiping loudly. Not only that, but my stomach rumbles and I find it excruciatingly embarrassing. I want the ground to swallow me up. Working from home, none of this was an issue. I can’t go on like this. Aside from getting a medical certificate, which I obviously don’t want to do, how can I approach my office to request I work from home permanently?
Philippa’s answer There are many like you who got used to working from home. Comfort zones for being with colleagues appear to have, in many people’s experience, diminished.
During the pandemic, it was repeatedly implied to us that other people were dangerous, potential killers, even. Shops and offices are still full of signs reminding us to keep our distance and wash our hands. Every factual TV series made since the pandemic shows people standing far apart from each other with an unnatural distance. This is all very sensible as a precaution against the virus, but what has it done to our psyches? It has reinforced any anxiety we may have had about others and made us more wary of our fellow human beings. It makes me sad.
After so long being on our own, the sounds and smells of other people may very well feel jarring. We got used to the quiet and now normal noise feels horribly over-stimulating and the situation has made us even more conscious of the normal noises our bodies make. Many people report feeling overstimulated and exhausted after re-entry post lockdown. I was among them. Many of us have had to build up again gradually, and I think you will need to do this, too.
Like many creatures, human beings are pack animals. If you remove a fruit fly from its fellow fruit flies, isolate it and then re-introduce it into the swarm, it doesn’t plunge back into the centre, but hides around the edges. It is as though it got used to loneliness and dare not risk what might feel like further rejection by diving back in. I’ve heard the same thing happens with rats, and for sure after isolation we humans feel shyer and hypervigilant for potential rejection.
I don’t think you’ll get fired for forgetting your lanyard
There are two things we can do with these feelings of fear and distrust: we can be ruled by the feeling and stay hidden, or we can feel the fear and join in anyway. If we hide, we carry on feeding our fears, but if we dare to feel them and act in spite of them, they will gradually diminish as we establish relationships and re-enter the fray, even when we had believed we would not.
I don’t think you’ll get fired for forgetting your lanyard. How kind of your colleague to ask your boss if you had been issued with one (there’s always another interpretation for a story). Forming cliques is universal within all human groups and we won’t educate anyone about sexism by hiding away. It can be awkward joining a group that is already established, as relationships take time. But what is good about them at work is that the cliché of two brains being better than one is true. We can have video meetings, but so much more creativity and problem-solving happens chatting by the water cooler.
When you enter a full room and think no one will be interested in you and other people are all horrible, what vibe do you give off? But if you walk in expecting everyone to be kind, interesting and attractive and you are, too, how different would your demeanour be? And what difference would that make to the experience?
I doubt there is harm in telling your boss that you work better at home, but it’s not guaranteed to work. I would encourage you, instead, to realise not all humans are all bad, and some of them are really great and will be fun and interesting to work with.
You have been searching for evidence to the contrary; I want you instead, to search for the good.
It’s time to be a little bit more optimistic about what people are like and gently push out the edges of your comfort zone, so that you can ease yourself back in and be less anxious about being part of a group again. You have an advantage over the fruit fly – you can decide to acknowledge your instincts, understand them and choose to override them.
If you have a question, send a brief email to askphilippa@observer.co.uk
