[WhisperingShiba]

I think most people just don't want to be under someone's control. At least, that is the case for me. Simple as. People not returning to their wage cages is a non problem. Spend less on childcare, spend less on food, commute less, improve health, spend exactly the needed time to achieve assigned tasks. WFH options are good for everyone except for megalomaniacs.

[dleslie]

Precisely. It turns out many of us were working to cover the expenses of working! Without commuting, day care, eating out, and so forth we're saving an enormous chunk of money.

Asking us to return to the office is asking us to effectively take a pay cut and reduce the hours we enjoy with our families.

[jcadam]

Any money I've saved has been more than cancelled out by inflation (particularly food prices). So now, going back to the office would be unaffordable.

[Zababa]

I don't know about most, but I know that I personally don't mind going to work if I have a nice office. Open spaces are not nice. Having people behind my back bothers me for some reason, it makes me feel on the defensive and I'm not able to focus as much as I want. Open spaces also means that wearing a mask is mandatory, and 8 hours of mask-wearing gives me headaches at the end of the day. I do however like being able to take a day or two a week to WFH, as it's nice to be able to take care of the laundry or tasks like this during a work day.

My view may be biased by being young, not having a family and living alone. Though I'm glad that my older collegues are able to spend more time with their family. My parents didn't have WFH when I was young, and I can easily see how a day or two for each parent could have made everything better.

As a final point, as I don't have a very active social life, going to the office fills that "interacting with humans face to face" need for me. That's not a reason to force others to come, of course, but if society switch to more WFH, I hope alternatives will emerge for people like me that have a more "passive" style of socializing. Vocal chat just isn't the same, and webcams don't help.

[ghaff]

Depending upon your location and interests, there are probably various activity clubs (like hiking to pick a random example) around where you live. Certainly I don't depend on the office (aside from travel/events) at all for socializing--though I did at one point much earlier in my career.

[Zababa]

There are activity clubs, bars, lots of thigns like that, but that's why I talked specifically about "passive" socializing. I would call these things "active" socializing. I personally have a hard time with these kind of things, so in a way WFH could make my life a bit harder. Again, it's not a reason to stop people from doing it, or anything like that, but it's still a consequence of the shift, and I don't know how to solve this.

[_Understated_]

> I think most people just don't want to be under someone's control

I'm not sure it's as black and white as that!

I've worked from home for a number of years and I used to think people were insane to want to go into an office but I've changed my tune in the last year or so for one simple reason: hardly anyone is set up to work from home!

At my last company (small, only 21 employees - they got rid of their office earlier this year), I was one of only three people in the video calls with an actual home office. Everyone else was working from a living room, bedroom, or in two cases, the couch with a laptop on their knees.

One of the couch-workers left at around the same time as me recently for a company that worked from an office for the very reason that she could work from an office.

It's horses for courses: some people like it and have an actual space to work properly and others don't. In my case I have a desktop computer, two monitors, a comfy chair, a motorised stand-up desk etc. I'd never get this level of comfort in an actual office.

As well as the physical space issues, there is the psychological aspect too. I spend 5 days a week in the house all day by myself. I'm a contractor so making office friendships isn't something that motivates me (doesn't mean I hate everyone, just some people :D). I'm fine with that. I have a couple of friends I've known for many decades and that's enough for me. I can also get work done no problem and still put the washing on, nip out for groceries etc.

I know of colleagues that crave the human interaction... which is fine. I don't. I get enough from my family and the daily (and mostly pointless) video calls.

However, if I had to work from a laptop at my dining room table, It'd suck hard!

[MrWiffles]

THIS. 100%