Would you take a sauna with your work colleagues?

I know I am supposed to like saunas. At-home saunas have replaced walk-in larders as the new status symbol and my local email group pings with excitement about a new nearby sauna-and- plunge place. But I do not like saunas.

My first and last visit to one was in Iceland, at the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa. I couldn’t believe there were people who’d willingly crowd, with strangers, into a small wooden shack, heated to unbearable levels. I felt like a mussel in a pot of cream and wine, or a letter being held over a kettle, or like I was in one of those dreams where the room is on fire and you scream ‘Fire!’ but no one can hear. I burst out through the door, coughing. No, thank you!

I dismissed saunas immediately as one of those baffling things some cultures have simply learnt to enjoy – like the British, with our insistence on laying out lunch on a table in the direct sun, then sitting for hours with melting food, getting sunstroke – a behaviour that is wholly incomprehensible to those from actual hot countries.

So I read about the UK trend for saunas at work – actual work! – with disbelief. Shoreditch-based fintech company Wise has one, and Arc in Canary Wharf is popular among local employers, who book group brainstorming sessions in its 65-person sauna lounge. OK. I can understand ‘break-out’ areas, ping-pong tables and even team-building weekends. I can also understand that Big Work needs to find new and fun ways to lure young people away from their kitchen tables and into the office.

In fact, Gen Z actively want to be lured back – last year, a survey of 8,000 found that 45 per cent of Gen Z respondents said they were looking for a job with more social interaction because 38 per cent admit to feeling lonely. But I’m not sure they meant they wanted to whip off their Reiss pantsuits and compare moles with the man two desks over with the incredibly loud laugh. Perhaps they just wanted to go bowling. This strikes me as a simple generational disconnect regarding what is ‘fun’.

Consider the other practicalities of the office sauna: what if you badly need the key to the stationery cupboard, but only Claire knows where the key is to that cupboard, and she’s in the sauna? You now have to knock on the sauna door, fully dressed, and clomp inside in your work shoes and say: ‘Sorry, Claire, do you know where the key to the stationery cupboard is?’

This is also an HR bomb waiting to explode. Am I the only one seeing this? Consider towel slippages, nudity etiquette or things mistakenly said because you are so hot that there is a loud whistling and throbbing in your head, eliminating all super-ego faculties.

It also puts employees who are shy about their bodies at a distinct disadvantage. Sure, Rob is more than happy to throw off his button-down and jump onto those hot, fragrant planks to bend the ear of the boss in a relaxed way, all the while showing said boss what a modern person he is, so cool and chill about being undressed and boiling hot.

But what about Gary? Gary is not cool about this kind of thing. Gary wears a T-shirt to go swimming with his kids. That means Gary doesn’t get that quality time with the top brass. If Gary also doesn’t like golf or padel, he could be in big trouble. This is discrimination! So, it’s a no to office saunas from me. What is the world coming to? In my day, we got free instant coffee in the kitchenette and were grateful for it. I mean, really: what is wrong with bowling?