Earlier today, my partner went into her office to attempt to do some things that she was unable to do while working remotely. It took her several tries to get the systems to work correctly. This was of course because of the office gremlins.

Normally, they are fairly benign and will primarily interfere with printers to gather space materials to line their nests. Especially if someone was helpful and took the paper recycling out recently.

They are known to sleep on routers and other machines that are left running, as they enjoy the warmth. As anyone working in IT can attest, a gremlin sleeping on your router can cause some irregularities in the signal strength, especially if you get a restless one who keeps shifting position. Occasional they’ll dislodge a power cord, or bump the power button, but in most cases these deactivations are temporary, due to their preference for the warmth.

They are also known to hoard office supplies, stealing pens, tape, staplers and other things that they can easily carry off. Little is known about the purpose behind these thefts, as no obvious use of the supplies has been observed. Further study has been attempted, but the cameras that were deployed kept going missing.

However, since everyone has been working remote for the last six months or so, they’ve gone a bit feral. They’d grown comfortable on their diet of leftover donuts and other assorted desk snacks, including the large bowl of candy that somehow often seemed to be in need of refilling, despite nobody ever observing anyone eating from it.

So, just a quick warning, prepare for extra time when attempting administrative tasks after the return to the office. Either that, or bring a box of donuts and tuck it somewhere out of your line of sight.