Oh, I'm aware, but the corporate bull shit they push to sell us on it is insulting to our collective intelligence.

If that’s the reason WFH should be the new normal in a couple of years when leases are up. That won’t happen though.

Correct - not that their big-brother asses would be caught dead in areas where the employees work. They just want to feel like people are there. It's enough to bring in a cardboard cut-out.

What's wild about that is that I am working outside business hours when I wfh. I'm showing up earlier, staying later, doing little quick things when i think of them rather than putting them off until the next day in the office, and I'm taking a lot less PTO because there's a pretty wide gulf between "too sick to get fully dressed, drive for 45 minutes and face actual human beings in person" and "too sick to accomplish anything if I'm left alone and allowed to take breaks when i need them". But you're right, there is a certain school of management that teaches that employees are an enemy who want nothing more than to steal from the company by being paid to do nothing, that a manager's primary job is to catch and punish these slackers, and that a lack of evidence of employees slacking off is proof that they're lazy and smart enough to hide it. Fortunately for me I now have a boss who knows that I do this work because I like it and that the team and the work will benefit most from me being left alone to do it and occasionally helped with blockers as they come up.

Or the lease expires.

Exactly much of my argument for WFH