In one of my previous jobs, I worked at a company where this was what things were like even before the pandemic. I worked in one office, but members of my team

In one of my previous jobs, I worked at a company where this was what things were like even before the pandemic. I worked in one office, but members of my team were scattered across two other offices. I had a 90 minute commute only to sit in an office where none of my immediate colleagues worked, and most meetings were done over WebEx. Here and there, people would travel to my office for some big marathon meeting/conference session. And to add insult to injury, if my manager happened to show up at my office that day and I wasn't there, I was given a hard time about my absence. It was horrible and demoralizing. I got to a point where I basically didn't show up to the office at all except for the occasional scheduled meetings, which were about once a month at most. I got three hours of my time back every day and actually increased my productivity, because I was able to stay home and deal with some health issues that I had at the time. That said, lots of people at that company sporadically worked from home, and even in the offices with my colleagues, there were days where as much as 1/3 of the team wasn't present. There seems to be a kind of critical mass number of working in the office: below that amount, and the office starts to feel like a ghost town, and it's benefits shrink past the point of being worth the commute. So I think companies are wrong to force people to come in every day every week, but it's clear that the benefits of working in an office on the manifest when there are enough people in the office.