I’m going to say it to you straight: if you want to be in the office five days a week, you need to get a life. And I would know a thing or two about work life balance —I’m at the top end of Gen Z, which means I’m one of the few members of my generation who have actually experienced both sides of office work, pre and post-pandemic.
When I first started full-time work after graduating from uni in 2019, I worked in an office in east London five days a week. I loved it, but I didn’t love commuting from my Brixton flat for an hour and twenty minutes every morning, meaning that I had to wake up around 6am.
I made it in every single day, something which would undoubtedly shock my current employers (sorry guys) who are well aware of my fondness for WFH Fridays and the occasional WFH weekday while hungover. Back in the day, I didn’t have those luxuries to lean on. I would drag myself into the office every Friday, already exhausted from the previous four days of hard work and mandatory socialising required by being in the office.
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My life suffered: I don’t remember going out or seeing friends nearly as much when I was 21, compared to now age 27, probably because I was knackered all the bloody time. I do remember a lot of sitting in bed, sleeping in bed, and lying in bed.
My work suffered too: I got burnout, needed therapy, and was often distracted in the office. And the hangovers, my god. Waking up at 6am and hauling yourself onto the tube only to arrive at the office and immediately throw up in one of the toilet cubicles was definitely not conducive to any more of my work being done.
Sunday March 23 marks the fifth anniversary of the Covid lockdown, a moment in time that changed our lives irrevocably. In many ways, its long-term impact is crippling. The loss of loved ones, the state of the economy, the strange leniency it afforded those in power. But in some ways, the ways in which Covid permanently warped our lives is an absolute godsend.
I’ve always been a reasonably hard worker, but Covid made me a machine. I kicked into a gear I didn’t know I possessed, made possible by the relaxing home environment and the absence of my usual sheer exhaustion. Then, when 6pm came around, I shut off.
Obviously this did involve a bit of going-from-bad-screen-to-good-screen during peak pandemic, but it instilled a strangely firm work-life balance within me that didn’t exist before, even when I had an office and house to differentiate them. I worked myself to the max each day, and then I gave up while I still had energy to exist.
Now I work in the office the majority of the time, but my work ethic was borne from the office-and-commute-free world of Covid, no doubt. You’d be amazed what people are capable of when they’re not tired all the time.
Giving people the chance to work from home made everyone realise just how necessary it was. The idea of taking it back is horrible, cruel, and hopefully impossible. You can’t give someone a thousand pounds and then expect them to roll over when you decide you’d actually quite like your money back, sorry. There’s a reason why hit Apple TV+ show Severance resonates so well this side of the pandemic — our relationship with work has changed, and now we can finally see how nutty we used to be.
Most of my generation have never worked a five-day week, and I can’t blame them for not wanting to. They know it’s not the ideal situation, probably because people like me keep gabbing about it all the time.
Like most things, it’s a bell curve: if they’re not going in at all and wonder why they’re depressed, that’s bad too. Socialisation in the workplace is deeply important for making sure you don’t become an isolated Quasimodo weirdo or an entitled TikTok main character type. But rest from the workplace is also deeply important. If you’re an employer looking to prevent burnout or outright disdain from your employees, this is how you do it — especially if the government continues being too chicken to give people a four-day week.
The only people who actually want people to be in the office five days a week are people who don’t have enough of a life of their own, or are cruel older employers who believe in subjecting people to the same torture they had to endure.
I had to do a five-day office week, too, but luckily I didn’t do it for long enough that it made me spiteful. As such, I don’t think my younger Gen Z counterparts should have to do it — and I never want to do it again, either.
Covid inflicted upon us so many awful things, but for many, it also mandated a healthier work-life balance. It was a completely necessary circuit breaker and we’d be stupid to look this gift horse in the mouth.
If you’re still in the doubtful camp, take a work-from-home day next week, finish at 4pm, go down to your local and get yourself a pint. I have no doubt you’ll be sitting on my side after that. Bottoms up.
