The fluorescent lights hummed a low, almost mournful tune above your head, a steady counterpoint to the aggressive tapping of a coworker’s mechanical keyboard two rows over. You were on a Zoom call, headphones firmly in place, watching your team leader outline the next quarter’s goals. Funny thing, though. Your team leader was sitting less than 22 feet away, in another cubicle, also on headphones, also looking at a screen.

There were only 22 people in this entire sprawling office building today, meant to house perhaps 2,222. And of those 22, at least half were engaged in virtual meetings with people who were, quite literally, just across the aisle. Your two-hour commute, an exercise in patience and atmospheric carbon contribution, had culminated in this: a performative reenactment of working, in a space that felt less like a hub of collaboration and more like a museum of past productivity. You had completed 100% of your tasks remotely, with higher efficiency and focus, but here you were, mandated to ‘collaborate.’

Beyond the Human Touch

Consider Liam C.-P., a hospice volunteer coordinator. His work is profoundly human, deeply personal. He helps people navigate the end of life with grace and dignity, orchestrating comfort and companionship. You might think his role demands absolute physical presence, and in many respects, it does. But Liam also spends countless hours coordinating schedules, training new volunteers, and providing emotional support over the phone. He measures impact not by how many hours a volunteer spends visible in the hospice, but by the quality of presence, the genuine connection fostered. Liam understands that true value often lies in the invisible work, the quiet empathy, the dedication that isn’t always on prominent display. He knows that simply ‘being there’ without genuine engagement is an empty gesture, a performance.

Anxieties of Control and Capital

And yet, many corporations are demanding that exact performance. They cite ‘culture’ and ‘spontaneous collaboration’ as the reasons for pulling everyone back to sterile offices, even as those same employees spend their days on Zoom calls. The real drivers, as I’ve come to understand, are far less noble. They boil down to two core anxieties: the obsolescence of middle management and the sunk cost of prime real estate. Middle managers, many of whom rose through the ranks by managing by sight-walking the floor, seeing who’s at their desk-feel a profound loss of control when their teams are distributed. Their traditional metrics of oversight evaporate. It’s easier for them to demand a return to office than to learn entirely new methodologies for managing remote performance. Their fear is palpable, and entirely self-serving. They’re afraid of becoming redundant, their perceived value diminished by a workforce that functions perfectly well, if not better, without their constant physical supervision.

Then there’s the undeniable pull of capital. The executives, sitting in their glass towers, look down at vast, empty floors for which they pay astronomical rents – perhaps $2,200 per employee per month, adding up to millions of dollars a year across a large portfolio. Every vacant desk is a silent indictment of their investment decisions, a glaring inefficiency in their balance sheet. The narrative around ‘culture’ and ‘team cohesion’ serves as a convenient smokescreen, masking the much simpler, baser need to justify these enormous expenditures. It’s a cynical move, forcing highly productive individuals to engage in theater to validate outdated business models. The numbers, if they were truly transparent, would tell a stark story: companies save untold millions in operational costs with a remote workforce, yet they cling to the illusion of the central office like a child to a comfort blanket.

The Two-Tiered System

This creates a deeply unfair, two-tiered system. The ‘face time’ individuals, those who can easily commute or who live close to the office, benefit from the proximity bias. They get noticed more by the decision-makers. Their casual hallway conversations are perceived as valuable ‘networking.’ Meanwhile, the more productive remote worker, perhaps juggling childcare or caring for an ailing parent, diligently delivering exceptional results from afar, risks being overlooked, undervalued, and ultimately, sidelined for promotions or choice projects. Their output speaks for itself, but their physical absence screams ‘less committed’ to those blinded by bias. This isn’t a level playing field. Just as we expect a truly level playing field in Gobephones, where outcomes are determined by fair rules and skill, not by who knows who or by physical access, our workplaces should operate on similar principles.

The Hypocrisy of ‘Buzz’

The irony is almost too much to bear. We’re being dragged back to the office, sometimes commuting 122 miles a day, to perform work that doesn’t require us to be there, simply because our presence validates the anxieties of others. I once worked for an executive who, after a year of successful remote operations, declared that ‘you can’t build relationships over a screen.’ This from a man who spent 92% of his own time in his private office, doors closed, taking calls and sending emails. The hypocrisy was astonishing, yet it was packaged as strategic insight. He genuinely believed that his occasional appearance in the communal kitchen was enough to foster the ‘buzz’ he craved, never realizing the true disconnect.

Redefining Value

It’s not an either/or. There are moments, genuine moments, when in-person collaboration sparks ideas, when a whiteboard session truly ignites. But those are rare, surgical moments, not a blanket mandate for 2 or 3 or even 5 days a week. The issue isn’t the office itself, but the *reason* for the office. If the reason is performative, rooted in fear and financial justification, then we are not building a more productive, equitable future. We are simply repeating the mistakes of the past, dressed up in new, subtly oppressive corporate jargon.

What kind of value do we truly measure?

Is it the visible, performative presence, or the invisible, dedicated contribution? We need to ask ourselves that, every single day, before we submit to the inertia of proximity bias for another 22 minutes, or 22 hours, or 22 years.