Before the pandemic WFH means I saw my friends and family far far more often - work with them during the day, more time to hang out, travel with them. And even co workers we’d arrange to work at a cafe or park. I socialized far more then at any office

With non-pandemic WFH you can see and interact with other people, in person, regularly, outside of work. Hobbies, cafés, bars, etc.

What if you also want to interact with colleagues?

One can arrange to interact with them outside of work hours.

If anything, it would be more honest then to, say, arrange to work solid 3 hours in the morning, then have 2 hours off (where you can socialize with whoever you want), and then work solid 3 hours in the afternoon.

For all the talk about the difficulty of separating 'work' and 'normal' life when WFH, some people seem perfectly happy to mix 'work' and 'socializing' in the office.

I get that as is, some people miss being in the office. It just seems like the pandemic presents a unique opportunity for moving to a better structure, whatever it may be, than simply go back to the old one. So I think it is interesting to speculate what that new structure could be for knowledge workers.

> If anything, it would be more honest then to, say, arrange to work solid 3 hours in the morning, then have 2 hours off (where you can socialize with whoever you want), and then work solid 3 hours in the afternoon.

I don't decide these things, just operate within the given framework. Which doesn't support your setup in general.

It is possible they are not telling you the truth.

That's A) super arrogant, B) completely ignoring the fact that we're social animals and introverts are a minority in the overall population.

"All of the people on my team would prefer to be in the office 2 or 3 days a week" - I am just pointing out that if people feel like they are expected to be in the office at all, they are unlikely to say anything less than "2 or 3 days a week" regardless of how they feel.