[Inception]

Responding here since the comment I was originally responding to was deleted.

> grace us with their presence.

> someone deliberately absent is insulting.

It seems you and the parent comment are conflating working from home/remote with playing hookey, which might be the case for your co-workers/organization and that sucks, but for a lot of companies that's not how it really works.

For example, my organization is spread out across the country, so even if someone on my team isn't working from home, they are still working remotely (from my perspective). This means as an organization, we have to establish communication channels to avoid the pain points you mentioned. I've been in "whiteboard" architecture discussions without being face-to-face with every person on my team and I would argue our way of accommodating remote teams is far superior to your in person discussions for the simple fact that we record all of our meetings and they can be reviewed by anyone at anytime.

Maybe recording these types of meetings (or all) might be something for you and your organization to consider? It seems like it would make you a lot happier and it is very beneficial to come back to a recording of this type of meeting months later and remember why you decided on a certain direction.