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Wanting to escape the office grind doesn’t make you a snowflake

Business partners working at home
‘In the UK there are 1.4 million freelancers, an increase of 14% in the past decade.’ Photograph: Xsandra/Getty Images

Younger adults are by now used to having their deficiencies highlighted in the newspapers. We are profligate, spoiled, and easily offended by racism, sexism or homophobia (making us “snowflakes”). We’ve annihilated everything from marriage to golf to napkins. And now, we have turned our seek-and-destroy Gorgon-esque gazes to offices.

A Times column by Jenni Russell (paywall) raises the concern that the switch away from traditional office work towards the gig economy, freelancing and contract employment might be affecting our social skills. There are 53 million people doing freelance work in the US – 34% of the national workforce. In the UK there are 1.4 million freelancers, an increase of 14% in the past decade. The self-employed are the fastest-growing group in the EU labour market.

That brings many problems – contract working and the gig economy have serious pitfalls. With flexibility can also come vulnerability. Such ways of working are ripe for exploitation, as the recent book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth so powerfully illustrates. The Australian Council of Trade Unions came out this week in support of casual workers being given basic employment rights. Job instability, low pay and unfair dismissal are all rife.

But Russell is unconcerned about all of this. Aside from arguing that a diverse office environment replete with proles is crucial to keep rich people from stagnating in their own bubbles (one interviewee says it teaches you not to “talk tactlessly to an assistant about designer clothes”), she also quotes a twentysomething whose freelance peers are lonely, isolated or arrogant.

Offices, meanwhile, allow you to mix with people “you would never choose to know and who would never be your friends … you have to work out how to communicate to get what everyone needs, avoid conflict … treat everyone with respect”. Sounds like most comprehensive schools. Did you really need an office to teach you that?

I love being freelance, most of the time. It means better mental health and more freedom

To centre the office, to proclaim it so vital despite the vast array of human social experience, seems absurdly middle class. Do bar staff and delivery drivers and factory workers and tattoo artists and shop assistants somehow lack social skills? Are things so work-oriented that we do not encounter people in other contexts – the post office, NCT childbirth classes, at the school gates?

The office is not a world I inhabit much, so forgive me if I am getting it wrong. But most people I know who do work in offices do not like their jobs, and take part in a range of other social activities and obligations that bring them interaction with other people. Most of them would jump at the chance to work flexibly. As for the freelancers – well, having to hustle for work teaches you rather a lot about people.

A 2014 study found that 87% of students with first- or second-class degrees found freelancing to be an attractive option. It’s time we asked ourselves why. Is office culture limited and tyrannical? I have found it so at times. A frequent complaint from my peers is that, as older generations live longer and retire later, there is less scope for promotion or development. When you feel stuck, unappreciated and underpaid, then striking out on your own is an attractive option. It also allows you to pursue other projects that may not pay, especially at the beginning.

Some university classmates chose tutoring over the £12k salaries that were being offered to us on graduation; many Uber drivers I have met have a side hustle of some kind. One man had worked as a manager in an office in India for 40 years. He acknowledged that there were issues with Uber, but said he loved being able to drive around in the sunshine.

As we all become more aware of our mental health, it makes sense that we are trying to find new ways of living. Human beings are happier when they have access to the outdoors, to light and to greenery. Flexible working gives us more time with our families. One study found that remote workers are happier than office-based workers. Not having your own boss reduces performance anxiety. I love being freelance, most of the time. A certain lack of stability is, to my mind, traded off for better mental health and more freedom (I could never have written a novel were I working full-time in an office). But I do think companies have a duty to not exploit their staff, and my mind may well change if or when my wage stagnates, I see the maternity provisions on offer, become unwell, or try to buy a place to live in.

Decoupling our ideas about working from office culture can only be a good thing. But it throws up questions about the ethics of freelance and contract working that all companies, including the Guardian, must think hard about, not to mention the trade unions that should be protecting us.

Those, not questions about social skills, are the real challenges ahead – and not just for workers, but also for employers. Because when you treat your staff badly, loyalty decreases. And just as it might be easier to sack a contractor, so is it easier for them to cut and run in search of a better opportunity.

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author