The original edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette, published in 1922, had little to say about workplaces. Post advised women, who mostly filled secretarial roles at the time, to leave their personal lives at home (“Mood, temper, jealousy … are the chief flaws of the woman in business”) and to not waste much of an employer’s time freshening up. But in a single incisive line, Post distilled the central difficulty of office life: “It takes no small amount of will and self-control,” she wrote, “to get on with any constant companion under the daily friction of an enforced relationship that is unrelieved day after day, week after week.” Basically: Hell is other people.

A century and countless cultural and technological shifts later, American workers generally agree. During the switch to remote work, white-collar employees experienced a measure of illusory relief — excused from the incessant small talk; the expectation to dress a certain way; the optional, but not really optional, happy hours; the smell of someone else’s leftovers in the microwave. Gone was the sensation that they were being observed and assessed based on factors that had nothing to do with their competence.

But now, back in the office, these indignities, and endless encounters with the unpleasant physical reality of their colleagues, have returned in full force. Dulled social skills leave us tripping over simple interactions — eye contact is a skill that must be maintained, apparently — and ruminating over minor transgressions. Ever-evolving policies, including hybrid-work arrangements, have scrambled the rule books on basics like hygiene, appropriate working hours, and how to write an email.

Each week seems to bring a fresh instance of egregious workplace behavior — like the woman who developed a habit of signing out-of-office emails for her catering-operations job with “fun little stories about, like, adventures involving squirrels and sharks.” When her boss deemed this unprofessional, she took to TikTok to complain: “I just feel like my personality is being smothered by corporate America right now.” Meanwhile,........

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