Chapter 8: Alone in a Crowd: Loneliness at Work

A Letter from Ingrid

Dear Jiwoo, I am a software tester. That means I spend my days trying to break computer programs before customers do, and writing reports about what goes wrong. I have done this job for four years, and for the last two years I have done it entirely from home. When the company closed our office and told us that we could work from anywhere, I was delighted. No more crowded buses, no more noisy open office, no more forced small talk by the coffee machine.

At first it was wonderful. I could work in comfortable clothes, take a walk at lunchtime and finish my reports in peace. My team is spread across many time zones, so we mostly communicate through written messages. Everyone is polite and efficient. We have one video meeting a week, where each of us reports on progress, and then we all go back to our screens.

But lately I have noticed something strange. On some days, the only voice I hear is the voice of the woman at the checkout when I buy groceries. I find myself looking forward to the weekly meeting, and then feeling empty when it ends after twenty minutes. Last week I found a serious problem in the program we are testing, and I was proud of it, but there was nobody to turn to and say, "Look what I found." I sent a report, someone wrote "thanks", and that was all.

I have friends, and I see them sometimes at weekends. I am not unhappy, exactly, so I feel a little silly writing to you. But I think I might be lonely, and I did not expect to be lonely in a job I chose because I wanted more peace. Is this normal? And what can I do about it without giving up the freedom I enjoy? Ingrid

Dear Ingrid

Thank you for your letter, and please do not feel silly. You have described something that many people feel and few people say aloud, partly because it does not fit the picture we usually have of loneliness. We tend to imagine a lonely person as someone with no friends, sitting alone in a room. You have friends, you have a job you chose, and you are not unhappy, exactly. And yet the moment you described, finding something important and having nobody to turn to, is one of the clearest pictures of loneliness at work that I have ever received.

So yes, what you feel is normal, in the sense that it is common and understandable. It is also worth taking seriously. In this letter I will write about what loneliness is, how it shows up at work in many different kinds of jobs, what various sources say about it, and some small ways to build connection without giving up the freedom you value. I am writing to you, Ingrid, but I am also thinking of every reader who works among many people and still feels alone, and of every reader who works by themselves and has never had a name for what is missing.

Being Alone and Feeling Lonely

Psychology textbooks make a useful distinction between being alone and feeling lonely. Being alone is a fact about your situation: there is nobody else in the room. Feeling lonely is an experience: it is the painful sense that the connection you have with others is less than the connection you want or need. The two often go together, but not always. Some people spend whole days alone and feel perfectly content. Others feel deeply lonely in a busy office, a full classroom or even a crowded family home.

This is why loneliness can take people like you by surprise. You wanted peace and quiet, and you got it. What you did not expect was that some of the small, ordinary contacts you were glad to leave behind were quietly giving you something. The coffee machine, the shared bus ride and the colleague at the next desk gave you the feeling of being seen, of belonging to a group, and of having your work noticed by people who understand it. When those contacts disappeared, the peace remained, but so did a gap.

People also differ a great deal in how much contact they need. Some people feel refreshed after a day of conversations, while others need long stretches of quiet to recover from them. Neither is better or worse. But even people who prefer quiet usually need some connection, especially the kind that comes from sharing work with others who care about the same things. Psychology textbooks often describe belonging as one of the basic human needs, alongside safety and rest.

Some general explanations of research describe loneliness as a signal, a little like hunger or thirst. Hunger is unpleasant, but it has a purpose: it tells you that your body needs food. In the same way, the discomfort of loneliness may be telling you that you need more connection than you are getting. Seen like this, loneliness is not a weakness or a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a message from a very old part of being human, from a time when people survived by staying close to their group.

There is one more thing that textbooks say about loneliness, and it may sound strange at first. Loneliness can make people pull back from others, just when they most need them. A lonely person may begin to expect that others are too busy to talk, or that a message will be unwelcome, and so they send fewer messages and accept fewer invitations. The gap then grows a little wider. Knowing about this pattern is useful, because it means that the first small step toward others is often the hardest one, and that it usually goes better than the lonely mind predicts.

What the Sources Say About Loneliness

In recent years, loneliness has moved from being seen as a purely private feeling to being treated as a matter of public health. International organizations that work on health have described social isolation and loneliness as important concerns for people of every age, not only for older people living alone. Public health agencies in many places have published guides about them. When you compare these sources, they agree on a few main points.

First, they agree that loneliness is common, and that it can affect anyone, including young people, busy parents and people who appear very sociable. Second, general explanations of research suggest that loneliness which lasts a long time is linked with poorer health, in the body as well as in the mind. It is associated with poorer sleep, with higher stress and with a greater risk of low mood. I want to be careful here. This does not mean that a lonely week will make you ill. It means that loneliness deserves attention rather than being brushed aside, in the same way that we pay attention to a cough that does not go away.

Third, the sources agree that loneliness is not a personal failure. Many of its causes lie in how our lives and our work are arranged: in long commutes, in night shifts, in moves to new places, in jobs that are done alone, and more recently in work done entirely through screens. Guides about working from home have begun to say that employers and teams have a part to play in preventing isolation, for example by making time for informal contact and by checking in on people who work alone.

These guides often make some practical suggestions. They recommend regular one-to-one conversations between managers and the people they lead, not only about tasks but about how people are doing. They suggest clear ways for people to ask quick questions without feeling that they are interrupting. And where it is possible, they suggest that teams who work apart meet in person now and then, even if only a few times a year, because a face that you have met in the same room is easier to reach out to through a screen.

Where the sources differ is mostly in what they think helps most. Some emphasise the number of contacts a person has, and encourage people to join groups and activities. Others emphasise the quality of contacts, and say that one or two relationships in which you feel truly understood matter more than a long list of acquaintances. Psychology textbooks often say that both matter, in different ways. Close relationships give deep support, while lighter, friendly contacts, such as a chat with a neighbour or a greeting from someone at the shop, give a sense of being part of a community. General explanations of research suggest that even brief, friendly exchanges with near-strangers can lift people's mood more than they expect.

Traditional wisdom has a lot to say about this too. Many cultures have sayings about the value of sharing a meal, and about how food tastes better when it is eaten together. Many working traditions, among crews on boats, among farm workers at harvest and among people in workshops, built shared breaks and shared meals into the day, not only for rest but for company. These customs remind us that connection at work was never just a pleasant extra. It was part of how people kept going.

At the same time, many traditions also value solitude. Some old teachings describe time alone as a source of calm, clear thinking and creativity, and many people do their best work in quiet. This is worth remembering, Ingrid, because the peace you chose is not a mistake. The sources do not say that people should never be alone. They say that solitude is healthiest when it is chosen and balanced with connection, and that it becomes painful when the connection we need is missing. Your task is not to give up your quiet, but to add back the part that went missing with the office.

Many Ways to Be Alone at Work

I want to give you some glimpses of how loneliness shows up in other kinds of work, because I think you will recognise yourself in some of them. The first is a security guard who works nights in a large museum. From ten in the evening until six in the morning, he walks the empty halls, checks the doors and watches the screens. He told me that the hardest part is not the hours but the silence. He looks forward to the moment when the cleaners arrive at five, because they always stop to say good morning and ask how his night has been.

The second is a young woman who moved a long way from home to take a job in a forestry office, where she measures trees and plans which parts of the forest will be cut and replanted. Everyone was kind, but everyone already had their friends and their routines. For months she went home after work to a small rented room and talked to her family on a screen. What changed things for her was an older colleague who invited her to the lunch that a few of the forest workers shared every Friday at a wooden table outside the office. She said that the lunch itself was nothing special. What mattered was that someone had noticed she was new.

The third is a woman who drives a long-distance truck, alone, for days at a time. She has a habit of stopping at the same roadside cafés, where the staff know her name and her usual order. She says that these small moments of being recognised keep her going between the long stretches of road. I think of her whenever someone tells me that small connections do not matter.

In each of these jobs, Ingrid, the loneliness is not caused by something wrong with the person. It grows out of the shape of the work: the hours, the distance, the newness, the solitude. And in each case the person found some relief, not by changing their whole life, but by finding or accepting small, regular moments of connection.

I should add that loneliness at work does not only happen to people who work alone. Some of the loneliest letters I have received came from people who sit in large, busy offices or work in big teams. A person can be surrounded by colleagues all day and still feel that nobody really knows them, especially if the talk is only about tasks, or if they feel different from the others in some way. So when I write about connection, I do not only mean being near other people. I mean being known by them, even a little.

Small Bridges

You asked what you can do without giving up the freedom you enjoy. I think the answer lies in building small bridges, rather than knocking down the walls of your home office. Here are a few ideas. Please take only the ones that fit you.

The first is to bring a little of the human side back into your work. Many teams that work through screens communicate only about tasks, because it feels efficient. But some teams set aside a few minutes in a meeting, or a separate place for messages, for ordinary talk: what people did at the weekend, what the weather is like where they are, a photograph of a lunch or a garden. You could suggest this to your team. You might be surprised how many of your polite, efficient colleagues feel exactly as you do.

The second is to share your work with someone who understands it. You described the moment of finding a serious problem and having nobody to show. Perhaps there is one colleague, even in a different time zone, with whom you could have a short call now and then. The purpose would not be to report, but to talk about the work itself: the puzzles, the clever finds and the frustrations. Some people who work alone also join groups of people in the same profession, where they can talk about their craft with others who care about it.

There is a gentle twist to this idea. Very often, the thing we are missing is also something we can give. If you long for someone to say, "Look what you found," you might be the first to say it. When a colleague's report catches a clever problem, you could write two warm sentences instead of one polite word. When someone in another time zone mentions that their child is unwell, you could ask about the child the following week. Small acts like these tend to be returned, and they slowly change the feeling of a team, one message at a time.

The third is to build some contact into the shape of your days. Some people who work from home choose to work one or two days a week from a library or a shared workspace, simply to be among other people. Others plan a regular lunch with a friend, join an evening class or volunteer for a few hours a week. The woman at the checkout counts too. A few extra words with her, a greeting to a neighbour or a chat with someone in the park are not trivial. They are threads, and when many threads are woven together, they make a sense of belonging.

The fourth is to notice whether the loneliness begins to change into something heavier. If you find, over weeks, that your mood stays low, that you lose interest in things you used to enjoy, or that you begin to pull away from the friends you do have, it is a good idea to talk to a doctor or another qualified professional, as I suggested to a teacher in an earlier letter. Loneliness and low mood can feed each other, and it is easier to break that circle early.

A small word of caution about screens, too. It is easy, when we feel lonely, to spend long evenings scrolling through other people's lives. General explanations of research suggest that this kind of passive watching often does little to ease loneliness, and sometimes makes it worse, while active contact, such as writing to a friend, calling someone or arranging to meet, tends to help more. The screen is not the problem in itself. What matters is whether it connects you to people or only shows them to you from a distance.

I want to add a word for every reader who leads a team, or who simply works alongside others. Loneliness is often invisible. The colleague who works nights, the one who has just arrived, the one who is always on the screen and never in the room, may be doing their work well and saying nothing. A short message that is not about a task, an invitation to lunch, or a question about how their week is going costs very little. For the person who receives it, it can be the difference between being a name on a list and being part of a team.

Finally, Ingrid, I want to tell you that writing to me was itself a small bridge. You noticed a gap, you put a name to it, and you reached out across it. That is exactly the skill you will need, and you have already shown that you have it. With warm wishes, and with the hope that someone soon says to you, "Look what you found," Jiwoo

A Question to Think About

Which small, ordinary contacts in your working life give you a sense of belonging, and which ones have you lost without noticing? Take a moment to think about the ones that seem too small to count, because they often matter most.

You might think about a typical working day and list the people you speak to, even briefly, from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep. Which of these contacts leave you feeling a little more connected? Are there moments when you would like to turn to someone and say, "Look at this," and there is nobody there?

You might also think about the people around you at work. Is there someone who is new, who works alone, or who works hours that keep them apart from others? What small bridge could you offer them?