On International Workers’ Day, we chart the cultural changes from moments of humanity at Wernham Hogg to grim visions of a more brutal post-Covid reality
In the final minutes of the final episode of the genre-defining mockumentary The Office, our favourite disenchanted worker, Tim (Martin Freeman), neatly summarises the banal rhythms of the early 2000s workplace. “The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with,” he muses, noting that he spends more time with colleagues than his own friends or family. “But probably all you’ve got in common,” he adds, rubbing his nose, “is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day.”
Ricky Gervais’s sitcom was rightly celebrated for its unvarnished depiction of the mundane, tedious and often soul-destroying reality of office life, but – hang on. Eight hours a day? Carpet? Walking around? Twenty years and two recessions later, the monotonies of Tim’s office environment almost look like perks. Cosy carpets have been replaced by sleek, characterless hard floors. In 2021, desk workers slogged for two extra hours a day, regularly logging off at 8pm. And monitoring software means overworked and underpaid employees barely have time to stop for a natter, let alone set their co-worker’s stapler in jelly (for the third time).
