More than five years after the pandemic spurred a mass shift toward working from home, employers are increasingly expecting their workers to come back to the office.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

If there’s one sacred commandment of workplace etiquette it’s that fish should never be heated in the office microwave. Decency and common courtesy require that one person’s pleasure can’t become everyone else’s pain.

Unfortunately, as offices fill back up, not everyone agrees on the importance of peaceable co-existence. And these office frictions reflect bigger issues that extend beyond bad smells in the workplace. Since the pandemic emerged, Canadians have faced new levels of anti-social behaviour.

To combat this, everyone needs to think about what they can do help rebuild the social contract.

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The idea of expected norms of behaviour may seem a bit antiquated – something from a more conformist time, perhaps enforced by tongue-wagging neighbourhood gossips – but it’s still how people are able to live and work together.

This succeeds, though, only if a critical mass of people buy in. And that expectation is showing cracks as white-collar workers spend more time in the office. Most of Canada’s big banks started requiring four days a week this autumn, the Ontario public service will mandate five days next monthand Prime Minister Mark Carney is looking to

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