I'm happy to go back to the office (I'm self employed now but I worked in an office before the pandemic and would go back to such a job under the right circumstances). But only with no restrictions on my behavior. If I have to check in and complete a health questionnaire every day, limit meetings to n people or not use meeting rooms, wear a mask, whatever, then I'm staying home. Don't ask people to come back until you can let them behave normally. Otherwise it defeats the purpose and just adds extra petty little bits of power to certain functions within the company. Really, a company's first step to reopening should be evaluating how they can roll back any kind of power or control that were temporarily granted to HR or other admin, compliance or security functions.

> at least initially, they needed to leave free time in their schedules for unplanned conversations

This will be chronic and go unmeasured, as before the pandemic. I’ve never seen an office larger than three where “let people keep working” was the norm and “stop, this new issue is more urgent” the exception.

Is that what they want?

Workers want things, too. Like, CEOs not getting on the average, 300 times the compensation as the lowest paid employee.