Boss demands Marketing Coordinator work from the office alone while all other employees are working from home: 'I asked if I could go to work from home and she has just ghosted me.'

Is there any value in having an employee work from the office by himself?

I find great value in working alongside others. I get so much more done working in a cafe with my friends than I do working at home, lying in bed in my pajamas, and a lot of Work from Home evangelists don't want you to believe that! Personally, I am susceptible to peer pressure. If my friends are sitting around a table quietly working from the cafe, I'm going to do the exact same thing. If I am home alone and left to my own devices, there is a nonzero chance I will spend 3 hours of the workday catching up on the most mindless Instagram Reels known to man. Some people aren't built for working from home five days a week, and that's okay!

I think there's a certain personality type that can really handle working from home exclusively and thrive in that environment. They are disciplined, motivated, and not easily distracted. They don't need someone peering over their shoulder and keeping track of them to do good work. If someone has been working exclusively from home for years and thriving, forcing them to return to the office probably won't make them a better employee. If anything, it's going to annoy them and make them think about how they used to get all of their work done while sitting on their couch, and now they have to spend all of this extra time and money commuting.

If a company allows most of its employees to work from home, the employees who don't get to work from home will eventually start to resent having to go to the office every day. The employee in this story was the only person in his office, and his boss didn't let him go home.