An old friend of mine who worked in the publishing business told a story of the charmingly old and crusty senior editor who gave all new hires to the office the same speech on their first day. He informed the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new hires that they were hired to do their jobs, and should not consider the office a drinking club, a fraternity, a sorority, a lunch group, a refuge for the sleepy, a sinecure, a stepping stone, a competition, a love-nest, a dating service, a source of free coffee or office supplies, a meeting place for those with soaring literary ambitions, a coffee shop, a revolutionary cell, a nest of religious anarchy, a coven of apologists, a café for free telephone calls or a place where dungarees and shirts sporting the names and logos of colleges or athletic teams or musical ensembles were welcome.

I worked in one office or another for more than 40 years until COVID transformed me into a dedicated work-from-homer. Now that I’ve been out of an office environment for several years, I realize that many of the things I enjoyed most about the office were the very things my friend’s boss said an office was not. Thank God I didn’t know then what I know now about office life.

I have fond memories of re-arranging the office furniture from time to time to allow for the creation of a mini-golf course followed by an office tournament where the winner was awarded – you guessed it, free office supplies. We celebrated birthdays, holidays, the birth of babies, promotions, new hires’ first days, old hires’ last days, visiting corporate bigshots, and Fridays. And sometimes, Thursdays. Often such celebrations included adult beverages in addition to the bottomless pot of coffee and the eclectic collection of discount teas and even more discounted sodas and sparkling water in the break room. On summer Friday afternoons we had trivia contests in the conference room or regaled each other with our embarrassing travel pictures and home videos. Once in a while, we’d all go out together to a new restaurant or an old bar.

That was then. Now, Wendy and I both work from home. In fact, we have adjoining offices. We get together downstairs for lunch from time to time, and often enjoy a cup of tea or a latte together in the afternoon. But we don’t really engage in the kinds of more organized free-time eater-upper activities that were more common when we both worked in offices in Seattle. Now that I think about it, since COVID we have been slow to get back into the habit of going out of the house for lunch or dinner together. So, on Valentine’s Day weekend, we went to Winslow for an early dinner. We had a bit of a wait for our table, so we headed down the street to the Amelia Wynn Winery where we enjoyed a lovely glass of wine in the equally lovely room that we had pretty much to ourselves before hustling back down Winslow Way for our table.

After an equally enjoyable dinner, we agreed that it was high time we made more of an effort to get out of the house for evenings out like that one.

Coincidentally, the following morning I ran across an article reporting that the nightlife in London was suffering through a troubling slump. In 2023 it was reported that since the COVID pandemic, 125 local music venues and 1,293 pubs had shut their doors for good across Great Britain. The reasons for this plethora of closures are probably as varied as the number of closures themselves, but there are also some pretty likely factors. Inflation and the high cost of living over the past few years have reduced people’s disposable income. The pandemic forced people to turn inward for their entertainment and social connections. The author of the article pointed out that when a community loses its restaurants and music venues, it also loses an important source of the good cheer, the laughter, the revelry, and the sense of community so important to everyone’s mental health.

Not that a more active nightlife is always a utopian experience, of course. Such gatherings can always go awry and lead to trouble, unhappiness or accidentally running into the neighbor you told you were going to bed early that night. But to regularly forego the joy of a fun night out with friends and family would be a recipe for an even colder and lonelier world.

Unlike many of the unpleasant things going on in our world these days, the decline of an active nightlife is something we can all take quick and effective steps to remedy just by going out more ourselves. I know that’s a daunting challenge for some of me, I mean some of us, but it’s one I’m willing to undertake for the good of the order, and I hope you’ll all join me.

Tom Tyner writes a weekly column for this newspaper.