You knew it was too good to be true.

The work-alone-at-home experience was just too wonderful to last.

The peace. The quiet. The ability to sleep in and sneak into Zoom meetings still wearing your jam-jams. The magical calm of never having Trevor from Marketing pop up at your desk at 9 a.m. to tell you that the three-week deadline for that super important project you just started has been moved to 1 p.m. that afternoon. With the CEO and the executive team present.

And are you feeling all right? You look a little green.

When you're working from home, Trevor can still pop up, but there's no one at your desk. You and your desk are in cyberspace, and in cyberspace, no one can find anyone.

But now there are vaccines coming that will keep you safe, which is definitely a good thing, and allow you to return to your office, which may definitely not be such a good thing.

Think about it — no more sleep-ins. No more jam-jams. Just Trevors A-Go-Go, 24/7/365.

It's the darkness at the end of the tunnel, and there's no turning back.

Or is there?

What you need in your arsenal are some super good excuses to avoid being called back into the office — for a day, an hour, or even a second. Yes, your co-workers, like the lemmings they are, will march off the cliff that is "going back to work at work," but you will be sitting home alone, in your jam-jams — and still getting paid!

Can't think of any excuses your bosses will buy? How about these:

No. 1: "I can't leave my sourdough starter."

This is foolproof. Everyone who has struggled for the last nine months to keep a sourdough starter alive will understand why you can't leave your bubbly baby alone, even for eight hours at the office. A sourdough starter requires constant love and attention, or it will turn into a sour mush and no longer be available to you to bake those two-inch-high briquets of a breadlike substance you can't eat and can't give away, either.

No question, you have to stay home and stay by its side. Not even a manager as cold-blooded as yours would want the death of a sourdough starter on their conscience.

No. 2: "I can no longer fit in my pants."

Participants in Zoom meetings are only seen from the waist up. In this way, the pandemic has made wearing pants unnecessary. The same reason has made staying thin enough to fit in your pants impossible. As the cobwebs on your Peloton prove, between binge-watching on Netflix and binge-eating on Goldbelly, finding time to work out at home is problematic.

(You thought it would be enough to buy the bike and the kettlebells, but simply owning the equipment does not cause weight loss. Who would have thunk it? In ordinary times, you would go out and buy new work pants from Prada and Armani, but shopping in a pandemic can be dangerous, and besides, your fleece sweatpants from Target are just so comfy-cozy, it never seemed worth the risk.)

No. 3: "I can't work with people who are not on a computer screen."

Just thinking about returning to work in a world where you see your co-workers in 3D is scary.

Someone on a computer screen can be muted with a single click, and they won't even know. This beats your previous technique of putting your hands over the mouth of a chatty Cathy or begging a chatty Charlie to "shut their pie hole."

Best of all, you need only a mouse swipe to make obstreperous co-workers disappear entirely. If you remember, this doesn't happen in a real office with real people.

If you are forced to go back, I suggest you buy a 24-by-12-inch picture frame, which you can hold in front of your face as you walk around the office. Pull it out for meetings, too, especially important client meetings. Explain that your teletherapist said that after months of working with people through a computer screen, recreating the screen experience is the only way for a person as sensitive as you to transition back to real life.

Sound weird? It is, and this is exactly why, after a few days walking around with a picture frame in front of your face, you'll be immediately sent home and advised to stay there for the indefinite future.

Trevor will insist on it.

Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at [email protected]. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Firmbee at Pixabay