“Men prefer to go to the office to get away from families and steal stationery,” proclaimed a headline the other day over a Telegraph report about hybrid working arrangements.

Wait!

Offices still use stationery? Didn’t that go out with the advent of emails? Are some managers still typing up office memos for the staff, photocopying a bunch and having clerks distribute them in employee mailboxes?

Or is it all a ploy by managers to lure men back to the office while at the same time making use of stacks of redundant inventory some overzealous office manager on the verge of retirement ordered back in 1981?

“Hey, we have reams of stationery, guys! C’mon back to the office.”

So, what are the men doing with all this stationery they are allegedly stealing? That’s the real mystery — and a question the reporter should have asked. “What in God’s name are they doing with it all?”

Instead, the reporter went with “for personal use”?

Really? That’s the best they could do? In 2023, when people who aren’t over 90 are actually unattaching themselves from electronic devices long enough to use stationery?

There’s your real story.

I dunno. Maybe they’re hawking the stationery on street corners. Or on Craig’s List. Or maybe they’re selling it to the over-90 crowd?

I get the “getting away from families” reason, though. But “getting away” is not the phrase I would have used in the headline. I would have gone with “escaping.” The office can seem like an oasis at times for the father of young ‘uns bouncing off the walls at home.

And the higher up the office ladder you are, the nicer the office you are likely to have. I did my debut comedy routine on a similar theme: the CEO returning to his “sensory deprivation office” after the pandemic.

Not that all the men — and women — who want to be at the office desire total peace and quiet. “Office banter” was another reason cited, with more men interested in that, too.

So, essentially, the men are escaping their madhouses to steal stationery and engage in office banter. Oh, and work, eh? And maybe a quick pint afterward?

Meanwhile, “women were more likely to report that working from home gave them “more time to complete work and fewer distractions,” the report says.

Fewer distractions? No office stationery. No office banter.

So, unwittingly, perhaps, the report paints office settings as bastions of men craving social interaction. Perhaps the theft of stationery is some thrilling rite of passage into the old boys’ club, harmless enough but jolly good fun, eh?

Or perhaps there is some other ridiculous reason men steal office stationery. It’s a mystery waiting to be solved.

Top photo caption: Skyscrapers on Bunker Hill, in downtown Los Angeles. (Photo credit: Tuxyso / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)