What you just described was a horribly inefficient use of resources. You gained insight through idle banter. While everyone is in office that’s what middle managers would tend to handle. All this time they thought they were herding cats, turns out the cats just wanted to be home. Now people don’t know who to go to because the “yes” person isn’t in a cubicle you can just waltz over to. Middle management needs a massive paradigm shift if they want to stay relevant in a WFH situation. And that seems increasingly likely to be the direction businesses will go once they cut staff with these asinine RTO policies.