DEPRESSING sentiments are expressed by London Evening Standard columnist Sarah Sands this week. She loves her office, she says, and only goes home to sleep. What’s more, using home as nothing more than a crash pad is, it would appear, a social trend.

Sarah’s piece is titled, “The office is now where we can truly feel at home”. Great paradox there.  But nonsense, surely? What sane person feels at home in the office?

The column in praise of unremitting toil opens with the baffling line, “Brand diplomacy began in luxury retail and now we are all at it.” Yer what?

The she goes on to praise her place of work:

“There’s no place like the office. We might as well enjoy it. Particularly since we spend more and more time at work.”

What a miserable approach to life. Since we are condemned to slavery, let us try to enjoy it.

More and more of life happens in the office, she claims. Groovy companies like the “futuristic” Google hold debates there.

Yes, the office is where Sarah’s heart is.

“What is the point of preparing food and putting up decorations at home when you hardly ever see them?”

Indeed. Let us breakfast, lunch and dine in the place of our employer. And bring the holly and ivy there too. Children? What is the point of giving them presents when you hardly ever see them?

“I am moving all my domestic Christmas cards to the office so I can enjoy them at leisure.” Sad, lonely Sarah, with her laptop open, enjoying her Christmas cards late into the night, serving her boss, being “futuristic”.

“Home is fine,” she reflects. “But it is basically for sleeping. Everything else happens at the office.”

“Work,” says Sarah, for “futuristic” types, “is a vocation and is 24 hours a day.” Bad grammar, surely? And a worse sentiment.

Sarah, you will not be in the running for Idler of the Year 2014, I’m afraid. Just five minutes ago it seems, “futuristic” companies were telling us that we could all work at home. And now we have to eat, drink, party and even celebrate Christmas on Google-style campuses. Why not go the whole hog and install some futuristic sleeping pods next the the office and dispense with the need for home entirely? Then our slavery to the corporation would be complete.

Sarah Sands: you win our striver of the week award.

ENDS