5:01 and Done: No One Wants to Schmooze After Work
Office happy hours, client dinners and other after-hours work gatherings lose their lustre as more people feel the pull of home
3 min
Patience for after-hours work socialising is wearing thin.
After an initial burst of post pandemic 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 socialise 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 favourite 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.
For decades, an unspoken rule of office culture has been that much of work happens outside the 9-to-5 window. Getting ahead often requires being known outside the building and having organisational allies—the type of networking that’s helped by showing up for dinner with the boss and getting relaxed face time with co-workers at happy hours, says Jon Levy, a New York City-based consultant who advises organisations on connection and culture.
Now, even the go-getters are saying no to after-hours schmoozing opportunities.
The thinking is: “That 20th happy hour isn’t going to produce anything better for me,” Levy says.
People are less jazzed about eating out once they are home, and many got pretty good at making dinner during the pandemic, says David Portalatin, food industry adviser at Circana Group, a market research firm.
“When the consumer stretches and builds new muscles, they don’t abandon those behaviours completely,” he says.
In the past year, U.S. consumers had 264 million restaurant dinners after leaving work, which is down 43% from 2019 levels, according to Circana. And reservations are now earlier: In 2023, 26% of after-work restaurant dinners happened before 6 p.m., compared with 21% in 2019.
Barbara Martin hosts bimonthly evening soirees for clients of her marketing firm, Brand Guild. Traditionally, cocktails start flowing around 6:30 p.m. and the mingling could last until 9 o’clock—or beyond. But last Thursday she pulled the start time forward to 5:30 p.m. sharp.
“‘I’d love to come to these if you could do them earlier,’” Martin says she’s heard again and again this summer. “Nobody wants to overbook themselves until 10 p.m. on a weeknight anymore.”
Attitudes don’t appear to be changing as the summer vacation season ends. Kay Ciesla is helping organise an all-staff gathering for 80 people at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Washington, D.C., nonprofit where she works as a governance executive. She is considering an ax-throwing theme, and serving finger foods and cocktails.
“I’m already getting pushback,” she says of spending precious time that bleeds into personal hours on team building. Due to scheduling conflicts the group can’t gather until December. One employee voiced concern that the socialising could turn into a superspreader event ahead of Christmas travel.
Doug Quattrini, an event planner in the Philadelphia area, has already booked six Christmas parties. What’s different this year, he says, is that most are on weekdays, in the office—and end at 8 p.m.
“Nobody wants to take up people’s Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays,” says Fausto Pifferrer, co-owner of Blue Elephant Catering in Saco, Maine, near Portland, which has booked several office holiday parties for Monday through Thursday.
Younger Americans are drinking less. The share of people between 18 and 34 who said they “ever” drink alcohol has fallen to 62% from 72% two decades ago, according to Gallup data.
Caroline Wong, the chief strategy officer at Cobalt, a cybersecurity company in San Francisco, quit drinking in her early 30s and tries to plan social gatherings sans alcohol. A team off-site next month will be a tour of waterfalls near Portland, Ore. She’s noticed things wrap up earlier when there’s no drinking involved.
“It’s like, ‘You know what, we hung out for 90 minutes. We’re good and I’ll see you tomorrow,’” Wong says. “I think there’s something awesome about that.”
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
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