It’s 5:01 and I’m Done: No One Wants to Schmooze After Work

livemint.com:

Patience for after-hours work socializing is wearing thin. After an initial burst of postpandemic happy hours, rubber chicken dinners and mandatory office merriment, many employees are adopting a stricter 5:01-and-I’m-done attitude to their work schedules. More U.S.

workers say they’re trying to draw thicker lines between work and the rest of life, and that often means clocking out and eschewing invites to socialize with co-workers. Corporate event planners say they’re already facing pushback for fall activities and any work-related functions that take place on weekends. “The flake-out rate is so much higher at events now," says Gretchen Goldman, a research director in Takoma Park, Md.

This summer Goldman sent an invite to 100 colleagues for casual after-work drinks at some picnic tables just outside the office as a goodbye party. She was taking a new job with the federal government. Fewer than 10 showed up.

“I guess people are just busy," she says. The pandemic altered eating and drinking habits, and pandemic puppies, now fully grown dogs, have to be walked on a schedule. With fewer people back in offices, there are fewer impromptu happy hours and a lack of interest in staying out late with colleagues, some bosses and workers say.

Andy Challenger oversees employees who participate in the fantasy football league at his outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas. When some of them floated the same game plan as prior years—an in-office pizza party that goes past 11 p.m. as everybody drafts their favorite players—the pushback was swift.

This season, the pizza arrived at 4:30 p.m. and everyone was finished and out of the office by 6 p.m. “Normally that would have been the starting time," he says.