A former colleague at the same company tracked Leyla Kazim down on LinkedIn last month. The message was blunt. They could have written her viral essay themselves, the colleague said, and nothing at the office had changed since Kazim left years ago.
The essay in question, published on Kazim's Substack newsletter A Day Well Spent in March, had already torn through social media when The Telegraph commissioned its own version on 24 April. The comments section passed 1,000 replies within days. HR trade press labelled the behaviour 'ghost working'. By the time the dust settled, Kazim had given a name to something millions of office workers apparently recognised but had never said out loud.
