"just to sit in a stuffy room and zoom" this is exactly it; for a few months prior to quitting Google at the end of 2021 I made an effort to go into the office because my morale (and productivity) at home had sunk to desperate levels. I wanted RTO to be the solution for that, but when I got into the office it was just... nobody else there, or at least not reliably so, and needed to VC with everyone anyways.

And then that got piled in with commute and parking woes, which got worse ever year... why even bother? I quit, instead. Have a fully remote gig now, and while I miss in-person work - - and the Google $$ I was getting -- I don't miss spending 2 hours of my life driving.

I'm sure things have improved some with more people returning to office, but the dynamic is forever changed as a result of COVID. There's a whole generation of hires who started during remote work.

I don't like WFH, but I dislike commuting to torture-zone deadsville even more.