IMHO, it depends on the role. Do you have a role that benefits from in person collaboration, or do you have a role where focus is the priority?

People get into warring camps about remote or onsite work, and we rarely talk about engineers, designers, accountants, etc. having very different needs. One size doesn’t fit all.

Its partly tradition, power displays, and disbelief. People who've been managers for decades somehow believe that being in the office is the only true way to do work because that's how it's always been done. Then you have some managers who will always get off on the fact that they can hold people's ability to feed themselves hostage to make them do what they want. Lastly, some managers just don't believe you can be productive at home. After all, all the not work things are there.

It's not about productivity.

It's about control.

Guess who gets to work in private offices instead of the "productivity enhancing" open offices!

The whole "return to office" thing is a cocktail of like.. "Feelings Driven Leadership" and "The Cruelty is the Point". Oh, and "I'm incompetent so everyone else must be incompetent in the same way, too."

Many managers make decisions based purely on feelings. You can show them data but they don't care. They feel like being in-office is better. And maybe, maybe, it is, on some metrics. Are those metrics better for workers? Probably not.

And the cruelty? Well, as others have said, some people get off on having power over others.

The last point, there are some people who just can't manage themselves so they seem to think no one else can, either. Like someone the other day was saying he can't work from home because he'll just play xbox. To which I respond, from the depths of my soul, fuck off. Grow up and stop making everyone else around you suffer because you're an incompetent, unmedicated, shit. You can go into the office if you have to. Don't make everyone else suffer a pay cut too because you're trash tier at self control.

gets to office and signs into zoom meeting

You guys don't understand that this is is the goal. Happy rested people thinl a lot, demand things, want a better life. Unhappy and exausted people only want to go home and go to sleep, they loose their souls and think that this is better enough. Those are easy to control

That guy in white with air pods looks like he's going to be at 110% at prompt engineering and LinkedIn engagement.

Remote work has been studied extensively for decades and the findings overwhelmingly show that remote workers, when provided the right tools and support, are significantly more productive. Demanding people commute to an office was never about productivity.

They don't care about this part at all. This is your time. It's your fault for not being rich.

Who owns commercial and office property? Guessing most aren't by non executive, non board member, working class

https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/commercial-real-estate-market-trends

There's a reason they combine office with data centers and the rest of commercial has been down

They made a bad decision gambling on overvalued office and commercial property leases and want to push their loss onto workers because they love to socialize the losses and privatize the gains

Trains are a much more desirable way to get to work than driving is.

Significantly more productive than anyone forced to commute by car.

White shirt guy maybe, probably either at making you extremely mediocre coffee (looks too straight to be a good barista) or doing something like the ux design for the app interface to a microchip that doesnt let your dog love you without microtransactions. The owners are lobbying for it to be mandatory, and all dogs without it will be liquidated by 2030. The app is spyware written by a large language model, and only sometimes works. Iphone only.

Tan jacket lady maaaaaaaybe.

Black+white checkered shirt guy is a cop, he's already at work. He'll be very productive later, already planning on attending the protest.

I don't overthink people's expressions on trains, nor do I think we should be taking pics of people who look upset because they look upset.

evryone look irritated getting randomly photographed

Awful AI slop

Uuh, I remember the London Tube.

It's so soul draining (noticed the empty eyes and avoidance of eye-contact) that it convinced me to start commuting to work by bicycle in London when it wasn't all that common (and which ultimately took around the same time).

Looks like a lot of people who are waking up off the clock! I roll out of bed, clock in, and then have to spend 30 minutes actually waking up for the day.