Comment by saghm

Agreed! At the end of the day, humans at work are still humans, and can form any level of human connection with their coworkers. Long-lasting friendships that persevere past being coworkers isn't super common, but that's because making those friendships isn't super common in general. I think the very real human connections we can make with coworkers is a large part of why it can be easy to confuse mutual loyalty between coworkers with loyalty to a company (which is effectively never mutual because companies don't operate in a way that incentivizes caring about the feelings of individuals).

That doesn't make it reasonable to _force_ people back into offices though. Companies requiring in-office work so that the workers can experience social interaction that they don't have time for outside work sounds pretty dystopian, and arguing for that for one's own personal benefit at the cost of others feels pretty selfish to me. To be clear, I think it's totally reasonable for a company to hire someone with the understanding that they'll be in-office, but the issue with what's going on now for me is that plenty of people who were hired with the understanding that they _wouldn't_ ever have to be in an office are now being told that they need to. I'd argue that forcing someone originally hired remotely to pick between coming into the office or resigning is effectively equivalent to firing without cause, and it's disappointing that it isn't viewed that way legally.