1 week Ago By Pilita Clark
That’s it. Summer is over. Beaches are emptying.
Desks are filling and Pret a Manger queues are growing as Europe and America go back to work. The FT office, like countless others, is full of the usual post-holiday commiserations about the jolt of logging on after so many days of switching off, sleeping in and generally not being on deck. I have nothing useful to say about this, mainly because I idiotically failed to take time off in August.
But I have also been contemplating a weird and unsung truth about work: people actually like it a lot more than they think. This is far from evident at a time when work’s reputation is being clobbered. The Great Resignation might have eased since the pandemic but talk of toxic workplaces, toxic bosses, burnout, stress and quiet quitting, or doing the bare minimum at work, is by no means over.
Nor is news about the right to disconnect, the four-day week and Quit-Tok videos showing young workers boldly chucking in their jobs in real-time..
