The Death of the Workplace?

This is a depressing thought, from a blog post I found while internet browsing:

So much of The Office already looks antiquated to me, because all of my friends are either working in food service, freelancing, nannying, or communicating on Slack, as I do, with a network of coworkers they haven’t even met, let alone gotten to know well enough to develop nicknames for. It’s a lot more difficult for a 20-something to coast her way into a cushy full-time job like Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Hitchcock and Scully apparently did. In fact, I don’t know any mediocre workers my age, because they never last long in any particular position. That bastion of workplace sitcoms, the bumbling employee no one trusts not to f--- it all up, is a dying breed.

Remote working has transformed my own workplace since Covid. I don't like it. I've chosen never to work from home, except for when I had no choice during the lockdown. As soon as I could come back into the workplace full-time, I did so.

I'm convinced remote working is a bad thing, although I'd probably struggle to make this argument when faced with its enthusiasts (which seems to be most people). For as long as I've remembered, I've feared an increasing privatization of society. I like the formality of work.

The comments on mediocrity touch upon another of my longstanding anxieties. I really and truly believe mediocrity is important, that a society has to find room for mediocrity. Excellence is the peak that rests atop a mountain of mediocrity. The historian Paul Johnson made the observation, which I think an excellent observation, that anyone who really loves a particular genre or art-form necessarily loves the second-rate and third-rate examples of it. I love the horror genre. The idea of only having classic horror movies like The Exorcist or The Wicker Man is a dreary one.

For the heart must pause to breathe

And love itself have rest.

Dare I mention poetry again? The idea that we can have only the tiny sliver of attention paid to poetry that we have today, and that poetry can flourish in those conditions, seems ludicrous to me. Lots of people still write poetry-- it's the readership of poetry that has disappeared. When poetry was seriously read, there was a huge class of indifferent or forgettable poets who achieved a certain amount of success, celebrity, or simply publication. But so what? How else could it be? Do you expect the local multiplex to have a constant stream of five-star films? Do you expect every soccer player to be a George Best?

But these are the sort of things I usually don't say because I fear people will assume I'm just being contrarian.