The return-to-office perk your boss won’t mention: Gossip is back on

A 25-year-old at a nonprofit group in Washington doesn’t know how she became the unofficial in-office therapist for her colleagues, but she has some hunches.

For starters, she has an office with a door that closes. That privacy and the fact that she is seen as a neutral party who works with nearly everyone in the organization but isn’t directly on their team makes others comfortable enough to confide in her. “I find out what’s bothering them about leadership,” the worker says of her colleagues. After all, she says, “You don’t want to tell the president that you don’t like them.”