17 Things That Happen When You Start Your First Office Job

1. More than ever, you find yourself taking pleasure in the simple joys that life has to offer – like ripping the plastic off a new package of staples or going hard as you compile a crisp spreadsheet in Excel.

2. While you were still in school, you never understood the concept of Happy Hour and why it was such a big deal for those who work 9-5 jobs. Now, it has become an integral part of your weekly – I mean, daily – routine.

3. Freshman Fifteen? That’s a joke compared to the Day Job Dozen – the amount of weight you quickly gained after you started working. There is always food around the office, and it’s always hard to say no, but it might be time to break in that new gym membership…

4. Except, LOL, by the time you’re done with your day, the prospect of climbing into your bed and simply decompressing with leftover pizza – not microwaved because that’s too much effort – and Netflix sounds ten times more appealing than going to the gym.

5. You now measure your self-worth by how many macros you’ve learned in Excel.

6. You’ve also resigned yourself to the sad, sad fact that you will never be one of those people who can wake up at an ungodly hour of the morning to hit the gym at, like, 5:30 before heading off to work. How?

7. Back in the day, you used to obsess over the phrasing in text messages you sent to boys you liked. Now, you obsess over whether to put “best” or “kind regards” at the end of emails you send to colleagues you want to like you.

8. The calendar function in Microsoft Outlook is your saving grace. Your friends make fun of you because you now send them calendar invites to hang out instead of just texting them. But, hey, that’s what grownups do, right?

9. You no longer go out on Saturday evenings because you can’t afford to waste your Sundays recovering from any poor decisions you would’ve made the previous night. Sunday is for important things – like folding your laundry, scrubbing the tiles on your kitchen floor, or pulling your cat out of your toilet bowl when he climbs inside of it.

10. During those Saturday evenings you spend at home, after you inevitably receive dozens of blurry Snapchats from your livelier friends, you wonder to yourself, “What am I doing and who have I become?”

11. Your LinkedIn game is strong, and that’s all that really matters in life.

12. Finally, after years of hoarding them in the back of your closet, you threw out all of those ratty crop tops and high-waisted shorts you never really wore anyways. Urban Outfitters is not business casual. Sadly.

13. Now, you have email alerts for sales at shops you always considered “mom chic” – like J. Crew or Ann Taylor – sent straight to your phone. These days, nothing makes you giddier than buying a solid blazer…for half the original price.

14. Because you can no longer see your friends regularly during the week, you have to consolidate all of your social obligations on the weekends – which are way too short. This has led to some awkward situations, but this has also forced you to think about who is really worth your time – since you now have so little of it.

15. Everyday, you purchase a copy of the Wall Street Journal on your way to the office — not because you necessarily read the Wall Street Journal in the morning but because you want to seem like the kind of person who would.

16. The cultural references in old episodes of The Office make much more sense to you now than they did when you watched the show for the first time. But, meh, while you now understand the humor more fully, it also makes you feel weirdly sad.

17. You can’t imagine getting through a full workday without at least one cup of coffee — black as Kris Jenner’s soul — every one to two hours. How did people manage before coffee? Coffee.