Dettol have released a series of adverts reminding us of all the joys of getting back to normal life (as well as… you know, using Dettol to sanitise every surface going every 10 seconds so you don’t pass on a deadly virus). Riffing on the opening moments from Trainspotting (Choose Life, etc) one of the adverts goes hard on how much fun we’ll have going back into the office. From ‘Proper bants’ and ‘accidentally replying all’ to ‘hearing buzzwords,’ the advert is uniquely helpful in reminding us all of all the things we don’t miss about office life (apart from ‘leaving early for a cheeky afternoon in the sun,’ which no single person has done ever since the financial crash in 2008). In fact, it’s a succinct summation of just the sort of corporate drone life that Renton et al wanted to avoid.
Here it is in full, because it’s a grey Thursday and we all need a laugh:
Hearing an alarm. Putting on a tie. Carrying a handbag. Receptionsists. Caffiene-filled air. Taking a lift. Seeing your second family. Watercooler conversations. Proper bants. The boss’s jokes. Plastic plants. Office gossip. Those weird carpets. Face-to-face meetings. Not having to make lunch. Ccing. BCCing. Accidentally replying-all. Hearing buzzwords. Leaving early for a cheeky afternoon in the sun.
The advert is now trending on Twitter (along with David Brent, because lol), and it appears to have touched a nerve (I properly shuddered at the mere mention of an alarm clock), with some Twitter users taking the opportunity to remind us all to join a union, and others reminding us that not having to make your own lunch comes at a price - namely £5 for a lacklustre cheese and pickle sandwich.
But fundamentally what this advert gets wrong (or gets right? I mean, we're certainly all talking about Dettol this morning) is that we’re not all chomping to go back to ’the way things were.’ I would love to see my colleagues in real life more often, but does that mean I want to do a manic nursery drop off at 7.45 every morning before hoofing it on a packed train to work, safe in the knowledge that I’ve left a pile of washing up undone till that evening and a load of washing to fester in the machine? If you’re still hanging on for an answer to my rhetorical question, the answer is no. And yes, putting on some proper work clothes, having some face to face (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE!) interaction with other people will be wonderful, but if the grind, the commute and the inflexibility of office life become my only option, 5 days and 40 plus hours a week, then absolutely not.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: How To Work From Home, From Productivity To Personal Hygiene
Obviously I’m coming at this as an office-based white collar worker who can do an awful lot of their job at home, but when we talk about things ‘going back to normal,’ we mean being able to hug our grandparents, and go round to someone’s house, and go dancing with our best friends. We don’t mean the absolute, relentless grind that was office life before lockdown. The Dettol advert was clearly designed to make us feel nostalgic for all of that stuff, but instead it just reminds us what we hated about life BC.
Sorry Dettol, we’re just not buying what you’re selling (apart from the actual Dettol you’re selling, which is probably quite handy to have around the house rn).