Corporate whimsy

Fake it till you make it.

While I am not a doctor, lawyer, nurse, or the President, I spend a lot of time at work.

My job is mandatory 5x a week in person all-year round. I have been there for almost three years. That means, according to Google, I have been in the office for over 700 days since 2023. In the year of our lord 2025, I consider that a feat. The majority of people in my life have hybrid work schedules, or more nonconventional jobs that don’t take place in the traditional corporate setting. When I tell people about this life of mine, I’m often met with shock and awe, especially because I don’t work in an industry where in-person mandates are common.

I love working in an office. I’m lucky to be blessed with amazing coworkers, a location that isn’t Midtown, and my job is objectively cool. Of course, I would love to take a Pilates class at 4 pm on a Wednesday like other people I know, but the grass is always greener, as they say. I used to have a mostly remote job that made me question why I was paying so much in rent to work from the most expensive city in the world, and as a raging extrovert, I often found myself lonely and missing the camaraderie that came with a job, or the camaraderie I’d been hearing about all my life.

Both of my parents had very demanding jobs growing up. As two people who moved to the town we grew up in because of work (Connecticut by way of Maryland and Minnesota), our family friends and people we spent holidays with were their coworkers. I was constantly surrounded by this idea of building a career you’re passionate about, in a workplace that becomes integrated into your lifestyle, with people who become like family. You see them more than anyone else, after all. Some coworkers of mine, I’ve seen for over 5,000 hours according to the above math.