Extinct: The Water Cooler

Do you want to know what is going away like the DoDo Bird?  The office water cooler.  Ahhhhhh yes, the office water cooler.  The place where gossip proliferated, affairs started (and ended), and where new business alliances were formed because company management was completely inept and WE can do better on our OWN.


Because of COVID-19 the entire office culture that has defined society since post WWII is about to end.  Is that a good thing?  Probably.  I remember my first job(s) at major stock brokerage firms living the cubicle life.  I took the bus to the city like a good little worker bee drone way back in 1985.  I took the elevator up to my floor and reported to my little cubicle with my fellow co-workers.  Oh..... I do have a moment of cubicle jubilee.  In 1987 somebody on my floor got off the elevator and shouted at all of us, "Get out and RUN toward the sound!  U2 is giving a concert just because."

It wasn't until later we learned that it was U2's "Save the Yuppie" concert in San Francisco.

Now that we are all working from home and will probably never return to the high rises, I'm feeling nostalgic for the office moments that defined my life.  Yes, most could be turned into a comedy show that has already been aired (The Office).  There will not be any more Christmas parties where people got carried away and photocopied certain body parts that were later made into wall paper in the break room.  There will not be any more gossip along the lines of, "Gee, Petunia has put on some pounds....do you think she's expecting?  George from accounts payable has been awfully attentive to her lately...do you think?????"

All this has been replaced with above-the-waist business video conversations online only meeting platforms.  Hey, if you're techy saaaaavy... use the 'touch up my appearance' feature.

AND... the Christmas party.  Weird.  I worked for Charles Schwab (who is Jewish) and back in the 80's they would have Christmas parties.  I'm having a flashback to when I was at a company Christmas party.  I was four months pregnant with our son.  A guy asked me to dance.  Being the dance freak that I am I would have danced with a mop if it meant I could get out on the floor.  The look on his face when I accepted his offer to dance when he discovered my pregnant lump was hilarious.  Still, we went out and danced.  It was JUST A DANCE....not a date nor a marriage proposal.   We both found the humor in it.

I'm mourning a culture that will cease to exist now that COVID-19 has changed the rules.  It's all I knew growing up in the age and culture that I did.  However, it really is unnatural and unsustainable to coop people up in little cubicles in an artificial environment that is away from families and homes.  Thinking that coworkers can replace family members is folly.  We should be spending more time with our families, anyway.  In the end, who will be at your funeral?