The six definitive rules of office lunch etiquette

Here’s how to handle eating at your desk, sharing a kitchen, hosting a celebration and more. For many workers, the return to the office after years of working remotely may have been bumpy, or it may have been welcome. And some people are finding the workplace is now permanently altered: Zooms aren’t going anywhere, and suits and heels might feel like a relic of the past.

But can we talk about another aspect of office culture? It might be okay these days to dress more casually than before, but – sorry, my fellow cubicle dwellers – it is still taboo to microwave fish. And you absolutely have to clean up after yourself in the office kitchen. Office etiquette isn’t about crooking one’s pinkie just right, of course, and it isn’t even just a matter of being considerate of your fellow humans (although that’s where it starts).



Even the most self-serving desk jockey should get on board, experts say, for a good reason: their own career. “Whenever we’re at work, we’re onstage,” says author and executive coach Brandon Smith, who goes by the moniker of the “Workplace Therapist”. For those of us who have spent years eating chaotically (and privately, with only our cats to judge), the rules governing how people should handle food in the office are worth brushing up on.

We enlisted etiquette experts and workplace gurus to remind us about the basics of tending to one of the most basic needs – feeding oneself – while in the company of co-workers..