Yesterday, my company officially merged with another competitor. As we are all supposed to say, we are all “better, together” to create new possibilities. Today, we had an an official all hands meeting to welcome the first week as a newly combined company, so “watch parties” were set up across coworking spaces around the world for employees of both companies to congregate and celebrate over lunch. We have a good number of employees at both companies in New York City/New Jersey, so we got a coworking space in Midtown West today and I attended.

I will say that the overall turnout on my company’s side was pretty paltry; people at the other company far, far outnumbered us, and they’re the ones with the remote-first culture, whereas we actually have a 2-day-a-week-in-office policy assuming we live within a 50-mile radius of an official office space. They passed out cookies, socks, and had balloons decorating our part of the coworking space. A decent lunch spread was put out in the kitchen. I made some small talk with a few of the employees at the other company and chatted with one of my current colleagues I rarely see. But I also noticed that there were some people at my company who basically showed up just to “show face” and left almost immediately. They barely even said hi to me and other colleagues they are supposed to know. It was so strange and even borderline rude. What was the point of even coming if you weren’t at least going to try to talk to new people who are supposed to be your new colleagues?

I wonder if people being so weird and cagey in these types of temporary work settings is a lingering result of the pandemic, of preferring to be holed up inside one’s own apartment and not wanting to socialize at work unless it’s simply to socialize “up” to get ahead, or to get favors done for you. Some people, even with age, do not actually get more mature.