Offices are the real germ factories and it’s time we discarded them

Man photo created by master1305 — www.freepik.com

A curious phenomenon happened in our house this fall. For the first time in years, I as an adult was not sick. Usually by Christmas I have had at least two brutal colds, one of which devolved into bronchitis with lingering coughs for weeks. But this year, nothing, no sickness whatsoever. Both my husband and myself have been working at home since March.

Now the eye-opening part of this story — both our children are in school full-time, the younger one young enough to not be required to wear a mask in the classroom.

The previous narrative has always been that kids are little germ factories and responsible for the lion’s share of adults getting sick but this fall and last spring proved that patently untrue. In previous years we noticed that at least half the time it was myself and my husband bringing colds and flus and other viruses home from work rather than the kids getting sick first. To be gross for a moment, “More than 10 million bacteria are on a typical office desk — 400 times more bacteria than found on the average toilet seat — which means that typing an email or making a call puts you at risk for illnesses.” WebMD

With the notable exception of gastroenteritis, I posit that it is in fact the adults and our workplaces that are the super spreaders of colds and flus.

The data bears this out as well, in my province of Québec, the workplace outbreaks of COVID outnumber the school outbreaks by a two-to-one ratio, and this is with the majority of white collar workers continuing to work from home.

There are many factors that contribute to this phenomenon, let’s begin with the hygiene myth. While it’s true that children’s hygiene can be questionable, do we honestly think it is any worse than that of adults when signs in restaurant bathrooms need remind adults to wash their hands after defecating? Spend enough time in a workplace bathroom — witness urine on toilet seats and floors, witness paper towels strewn about, witness the condition of any workplace bathroom at the end of the day and you will come to the same conclusion — adults are just as unhygienic as children.

Next, let’s consider workplace and air circulation. While it’s true that most schools lack modern ventilation systems, they are also often blessed with older structures in which windows still open and teachers can and do open windows throughout the day. School children also enjoy recess — two or three times per day they go outside — whereas adults are expected to sit in the same space for eight hours straight with the exception of eating in the break room.

Finally, we examine the sick hero culture. Throughout the fall, choruses of coughs echo throughout office buildings as people heroically go into work feverish and sick. Our culture celebrates this foolishness — we praise the infectors but scold the infected for wanting to stay home. With stingy vacation and sick days, we perpetuate worker illnesses which in the end is destructive for productivity. Parents, of course, have the double-whammy of needing to stay home with sick children so of course none will go into work when they become sick, knowing it will be a matter of days before they must stay home to mind their children.

Many jobs cannot be done from home, of course, but for the ones that involve sitting in front of a computer, that can literally be done from anywhere. The pandemic has taught us employees can produce unchained from an office desk. We have the opportunity to transform our culture and not just prevent a pandemic from ravaging our population but also drastically reduce the annoyances of cold viruses and the tragedies of children dying from seasonal flu. Also we have the chance to save businesses real money by simply not having us all crowd into dirty offices while sick.