Breach of social contract. For years these companies pretended that their corporate culture was all about going out of their way to make employees happy and fulfilled. The massive WFH brought forth by the pandemic has exposed that corporate culture actually clashes with employee fulfillment and is not focused on supporting it. The rationale with their RTO mandates may have merits, the problem is this broader context. This is making an about face without ever openly admitting the longstanding hypocrisy, and this is what makes the arguments brought forth difficult to hear for most people, and I personally think that their feeling is legitimate.
Satisfying the need to control others (and feel it face to face) and justifying commercial rents are not good reasons. Commercial buildings are owned by the upper wealthy class. Are you saying the unreasonable needs of the few to have power and wealth outweigh the needs of the many to live happy, fulfilling lives?
Here are the reasons you wish to portray as being valid.
* Fill the void in their lives as their lives revolve around work,
* satisfy the need to control others and feel it face to face,
* justify the commercial building rents,
Out of the three, only the investment in real estate is valid and has a concrete business value. However, it's also a short-term business decision to increase operational cost that was proven a failure by short- to mid-term trends. WFO fixes this mistake by eliminating the need to pay an operational cost that you don't need to pay.
To me this means you really have no argument supporting RTO.
But surely there's a middle ground! Sociopathic "tendencies."
But surely it's nuanced. There are plenty of reasons someone might use to explain away their sociopathy and unless we fully explore all of those, we're just not being fair!