“Now I Know We’re All Eager To Get Back to The Office” Says Boss, With Straight Face

EMPLOYEES at a Waterford accountancy firm have been sending each other WhatsApps on the sly during an all-staff Zoom call with their boss Fintan Armstrong, to see if he’s actually being serious when he talks emotionally about how ‘the whole team can’t wait to get back in the building’.

“Is he for fucking real?” asked HR staff member Alice Deelan, as Armstrong continued to talk earnestly about how McKinnion & Lowe were ‘one big family’ and how working from home had been ‘a nightmare for us all’.

“Does he honestly think we’re sitting at home crying over missing out on the 70-minute each-way commute twice a day, or that we can’t live without the sound of Eric in accounts talking shite all day while we’re counting down the minutes to get out of the place?”.

The statements by M&L Accountancy top brass echo those of bosses from around the country, who are eager to get their workers back under a roof of their choosing, to eliminate any sort of work/life balance that favours the employee; something that will require an incredible amount of poker-playing from them.

“It’s pretty hard to deliver lines like ‘we all miss the camaraderie of the office’ with a straight face when fifty little windows on Zoom are filling up with raised eyebrows” said boss Armstrong after the call.

“It’s hard to convince workers that 8-hours a day sitting beside a co-worker you secretly wish would fall down some stairs is ‘great craic’, and better than the freedom of WFH. But, y’know, we’re paying rent on this big office and we can’t have it empty, so it’s time to start herding everyone back in so they can be the cattle we need them to be, instead of being the free-range hens they’ve grown accustomed to”.