Update 9:50am CT, July 21: Tiffany told the Daily Dot her video was intended to be satire. She also made this clarification in a comment on her post, saying the video is "not a reflection of my company culture or my views on return to work!"
Original story: As more people return to the office after two years of working from home, the resettling process is facing growing pains.
As a viral TikTok video from user Tiffany (@tiffany.heeren) demonstrates, these introductions don't always go smoothly. Her video currently has over 170,000 views.
@tiffany.heeren i cant stop thinking about this #corporatelife #corporatebaddie #wfhlife #embarrassing
♬ -
While managers claim that productivity has gone down during time spent working from home, employees report the opposite, per a June article by Rani Molla for Vox, with “nearly 80 percent of employees think[ing] they’ve been just as or more productive than they were before the pandemic.”
Furthermore, while employers say that the office is “good for creativity, innovation, and culture building,” employees are suspicious of this reasoning. Instead, they tend to cite “their company’s sunk real estate investments, their bosses’ need for control, and their middle managers’ raison d’etre” as the true causes bringing them back into the office.
Regardless of the reason, employees are slowly but surely making their way back into the workplace—or in some cases, going into the office for the first time. As many people switched jobs during the pandemic, the return to the office is providing many employees with their first face-to-face meeting with their coworkers.
In Tiffany's case, she recently met her co-workers in person for the first time since starting her job nine months ago. However, it didn't go as well as one would hope.
“I’ve been working fully remote since i started this job in nov,” she explains in the text overlaying her video. “I just met some of my coworkers for the first time last week. After a couple drinks one guy told me ‘you’re really cool, i didn’t expect this from you RBF [resting bitch face] all day.’”
“He also told me it was obvious i didn’t shower bc my hair was oily,” she continues. “So ya how is everyone else’s week going?”
In comments, users shared their surprise at Tiffany’s coworker interaction.
“They losing the basic manners during COVID apparently,” one user wrote.
“He said forgot about the work wife I want a work nemesis,” another joked.
“As head of HR for my company… file an HR complaint immediately,” a third user stated.
Others shared their own co-worker stories.
“When I met everyone for the first time they were shocked at how tall I was and that’s all they talked about,” a commenter wrote. “Extremely awkward, would not recommend.”
“This reminds me of the time that a coworker and I were at the same wedding and he proceeded to tell my BFs family that I did not look this nice at work,” a second user recalled. “Keeping me humble.”
Above all, users supported Tiffany.
As one user offered, “Sounds like you are cooler IRL and he just got worse.”
In an email to Daily Dot, Tiffany said she was surprised by the video's virality and stated that the events she listed did, in fact, happen.
"My only comment would be that I didn’t expect the video to blow up and it was meant to just be a funny joke," she wrote, "even though it is a true story!"
