THE CONTRARIAN PRESS

  • The Death of the Smoking Area: When We Banned the Only Place People Actually Talked

    Modern offices eliminated smoking and accidentally eliminated friendship. Somewhere between HR policies, wellness initiatives, and the collective decision to live forever, we quietly erased the last socially acceptable reason for strangers to talk to each other without a meeting invite. We removed cigarettes from buildings and replaced them with Slack channels titled #wellbeing. Nobody talks…