Comedian reenacts office small talk by the microwave... and it’s spot on

Itching to get back to the office? Missing hanging out with your colleagues?

You can relive the experience, thanks to this uncanny sketch.

Actor Harrry Trevaldwyn reenacted “the office chats you’re missing while you’re waiting for the microwave,” in a hilarious one-minute video.

The clip, posted to Twitter on Tuesday, shows him making small-talk with an imagined colleague while the microwave rumbles slowly on.

Over the course of their “discussion”, he poses typical questions such as: “Did you watch the new episode of…” and “Wait, what was it called? I’ll write that down. I need some good podcasts.”

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As well as raising familiar topics – such as a request on Slack to “chip in” for a colleagues baby shower, “which is yeah… completely, completely fair” – the chat is interspersed with more offbeat topics like “intermittent fasting” and “once nearly drowning staring at [his] own reflection in a lake.”

At one moment he even bursts into song.

As the conversation draws to a close and he eventually extracts his tupperware, Trevaldwyn realises he’s had it on “defrost mode”.

The video, which has been viewed more than 289,000 times and garnered more than 10,000 likes in less than 24 hours, has struck a chord with thousands of Twitter users.

One person tweeted: “For the complete experience you need to use the microwave after somebody has heated up some fish curry.”

Another wrote: “So spot on, it’s crazy. I almost started replying to some, purely out of habit.”

Meanwhile, others shared their own tactics for avoiding small talk.

“A friend of mine hates small talk and so she just asks people questions like ‘what is your deepest darkest fear?’ or ‘what is the film that changed you as a person’ which either stimulates an incredible conversation or helps speed the other person out of the room,” tweeted one.

Another added: “Don’t miss this at all ! Just remembered my ‘ heat up food for a third longer than required, go to the loo during heating time therefore managing to avoid all small talk’ trick.”

While a third shared a photo of a note, writing: “This cut down on our kitchen chitchat for quite a while...”

Other users simply reminisced about microwave etiquette:

According to the Government’s current Covid roadmap, workers should be back in offices by the summer.

So get your questions – and your tupperware – ready, everyone.

More: Finding the positivity amongst the pandemic pandemonium