Are they trying to make their employees hate them?

I find great value in working alongside others. I get so much more done working in a cafe with my friends than I do working at home, lying in bed in my pajamas, and a lot of Work from Home evangelists don’t want you to believe that! Personally, I am susceptible to peer pressure. If my friends are sitting around a table quietly working from the cafe, I’m going to do the exact same thing. If I am home alone and left to my own devices, there is a nonzero chance I will spend 3 hours of the workday catching up on the most mindless Instagram Reels known to man. Some people aren’t built for working from home five days a week, and that’s okay!

I think there’s a certain personality type that can really handle working from home exclusively and thrive in that environment. They are disciplined, motivated, and not easily distracted. They don’t need someone peering over their shoulder and keeping track of them to do good work. If someone has been working exclusively from home for years and thriving, forcing them to return to the office probably won’t make them a better employee. If anything, it’s going to annoy them and make them think about how they used to get all of their work done while sitting on their couch, and now they have to spend all of this extra time and money commuting.

Not all companies have mandatory return-to-office policies. Some of them have something that’s much more irritating. The employee in this story is forced to attend virtual happy hours every Friday at 4 PM, and he despises them.