Miss the office? Michael Schur – master of the workplace sitcom – on why we should relish our return

<p>As we slowly rediscover a world of bad wifi and slow lifts, the US Office writer and creator of Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine explains why he can’t wait to get back</p><p>One of the first things we knew back in early 2020 was that we <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/americans-shutdown-coronavirus-fears" title="">wouldn’t be going to work</a> for a while. We thought that we would take a quick break – a week, maybe – and then reassess. So we cleaned out our cubicles and desks, and grabbed a few snacks from the kitchen (and toilet paper from the bathroom). One week became two, which became a month, which became a series of question marks spanning endlessly into the future, as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/zoom" title="">Zoom</a>s and FaceTimes and home office conversions gradually made the very idea of spending our workdays with other people seem like a quaint memory. Like childhood birthday parties, or answering machines, or properly functioning democracy.</p><p>Some of us might never go back. Every so often we will hear about companies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/14/future-of-workplaces-covid-19-transform-office-life" title="">reassessing their relationship</a> to the office, which has been proved unnecessary or at least outdated.</p><p>‘In 1987,’ photographer Steven Ahlgren says, ‘when I was bored and unfulfilled, working as a banker in Minneapolis, I began taking frequent trips to look at a painting by <a href="https://www.edwardhopper.net/office-at-night.jsp">Edward Hopper, Office at Night</a>. What first drew me was its setting, which I related to each and every workday at the bank. But what kept pulling me back was its ambiguous narrative – who were these two people, what was their relationship, and why was the woman lo