BLAISE TAPP: Cake makes being at work more enjoyable

Although I occasionally put on a shirt just for the hell of it, the last time I wore a tie, Boris Johnson was confidently telling anybody who’d listen how he’d lead the Conservatives to victory at the next general election. It was that long ago.

As convenient as working from home is, I have grown weary of only having Ken Bruce - although not for much longer - and Jeremy Vine to keep me company during the day and long for human contact, even if much of the day in the office would be punctuated with the click, clack of keyboards and laboured weather chit chat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sure how I would feel about re-entering the rat race full time and having to wear shoes on a daily basis rather than super warm old man’s slippers would be a deal breaker, but I still feel like I am missing out on a lot.

Putting to one side the obvious benefits of working in a team and sharing ideas - even if most of them are doomed to failure - it’s the individuals I miss, and I’m not sure how many people could say that about their colleagues three years ago, just before Covid-19 turned the world on its head.

I’ve been extremely lucky enough to work with many fine folk over the years and the best of them also happen to have been extremely talented bakers, which often made even the worst of days that little bit more enjoyable?

Is there anything better than a roughly cut slice of Victoria Sponge after a particularly difficult phone call or a morning of mind numbing, back to back meetings? And don’t get me started on carrot cake - especially if it has come out of the oven the night before.

The sight of a co-worker presenting their chums with a snazzy tin or giant plastic tub full of baked delights is guaranteed to put a spring in the step of the vast majority of under pressure workers. However, is the age of office cake sharing doomed?

While I sincerely hope that this isn’t the case, the intervention by a senior health expert last week means that the days of flapjacks by the photocopier or chocolate fudge cake in the IT suite could be numbered.

When Professor Susan Jebb, who chairs the Food Standards Agency said that bringing cake into the office should be seen as harmful to fellow workers as passive smoking, it provoked an inevitable chorus of ‘that’s the nanny state for you’ across the country and not just from the usual suspects - those who think that anybody who doesn’t stand to full attention whenever they see a Union Flag is a snowflake.

While the very eminent professor did her best to explain her analogy, it didn’t work very well because, as nearly everybody pointed out, you can always so no to a slice of cake, whereas in the days when people lit up indoors, it wasn’t always your choice whether you inhaled second hand smoke or not.

I suppose the obvious answer to the prof would be that smoking inside public places has been banned for more than 15 years now, such were the health risks associated with lighting up indoors. While there is no chance of any self-respecting politician advocating criminalising the works of Mary Berry, it’s almost a certainty that it won’t be long before we hear the occasional tale of an over zealous HR department cautioning employees against displaying their affection to colleagues by sharing blueberry muffins.

The best offices I have worked in have been the ones where the staff not only work as a team but actually quite like each other. Cake and brews go a long way to cementing those relationships.