I agree with your comment 100% but the closing line is ridiculously beside the point. I also really don't get how anyone reads into my post that I want to force everyone to come back to the office all the time. My whole point was that I sometimes feel like I'm the only one missing certain things about working in a co-located manner and, you're absolutely right there, I forgot to factor in some very import background factors like the country you're working from.
The last line of my comment was "OP likely doesn't factor this in and comes to the naive conclusion that it must mean we don't like talking to people".
Your post did say, "others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people". Not me, but others did take that to suggest that many of us were antisocial or incapable of social interaction. I don't take offense because I will easily admit to not being interested in talking to most people. Granted that doesn't mean I don't care about their wellbeing; it just means I don't want to spend my time on conversation which I think offers little to either party for the time and effort.
I didn't comment on whether you want people to come back to the office or not. Some want it desperately, and some (like me) will pass up every job opportunity that has any measurable in-office requirement.
Don't feel alone though -- you are not the only person wanting to come back into the office. About 1/3 of my colleges at my previous gig this year were asking for this. 1/3 of us were thinking, "wtf, hell no, we don't want to come in". And 1/3 were not publicly commenting :). In my experience during the COVID times, it did seem that the people most interested in returning to the office were younger. The older folks were openly joyous of being able to work from home.
> Don't feel alone though -- you are not the only person wanting to come back into the office. About 1/3 of my colleges at my previous gig this year were asking for this. 1/3 of us were thinking, "wtf, hell no, we don't want to come in". And 1/3 were not publicly commenting :).
Random aside, but it's fascinating to me that, when we ran a survey at our company, we had literally the exact same results.
I'm kinda jealous of sociologists and economists, because there's some fascinating research papers that will come out of all of this.
