is this employee in the room with us right now?

Counterpoint: you can have high-quality human contact with people you choose to be around, not so much with people you're paid to be around.

Didn't you choose your place of employment?
- Even if I did choose the company I applied to for work, I didn't choose my coworkers, nor did I get to meet them until after I was hired. And, I certainly don't get to choose the customers I have to interact with during my work.
- Considering that my desired workplace is "laying in bed for $5k a week", no I can't say that I did. Survival and a safe place to shit dictated that.
  
  You'd get bored and want to be productive.
  
  It's just hard to be motivated when burnt out by a company that hates it needs you and forces people to do work in a stupid way without autonomy and the goal of fucking their customers
  
  Edit: I'm referring to post-capitalism, not justifying corporate bullshit
  
  Edit: I have no idea what's going on. Clearly someone doing nothing would do things not to be bored.
  
  You’d get bored and want to be productive.
  
  I can whole heartedly confirm that not everyone needs to have a job to not be bored. My ADHD ass has a whole ton of possible things I can learn the absolute basics too without being productive and moving onto the next shiny thing but work keeps getting in the way.
  
  See, I would classify learning for learning's sake to be productive.
  
  And, yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say
  
  Learning by itself isn't being productive because it doesn't produce anything. Doing things with that knowledge would be productive.
  
  Keep in mind the context of this thread is work, which gives a context to being 'productive' that is wasting time making someone else money to get a pittance.
  
  I separate work under capitalism from community directed, individually motivated, anarchially organised work. Hence the first edit.
  
  Learning is a requirement of productivity, productivity cannot exist without learning, therefore learning is productive.
  
  I don't think people have an issue with work, they have an issue with the current state.
  
  The post is about capitalism.
- I chose to apply for job X, I didn't choose who would apply to work in the same place.

High quality human contact, in a workplace?

...yes?
- I like my coworkers. I mean it; they're nice people.
  
  But I want to spend time with the people I deeply care about, who share the same hobbies or have a similar vision of the world. I can't express myself freely around coworkers as I can with people I choose to be around in my free time.

Do you not have a life outside the office? I’m sorry if that’s the case.

No need to subject everyone to in-office mandates just because for some people it’s the only way they get “human contact” (going to ignore the “high-quality” part of your statement lol)

A lot of people don't and I'm convinced that's why they want to go back to the office. It's not that they hate their family, it's that they're boring and bland so not only do they not go out and make friends doing things they love, they're convinced the only way to have friends is to pay someone to be in proximity with them.

I pity those people. On the other hand I have a rich and fulfilling personal life that includes friends, family, solitude, and people I choose to have in my life. I don't need those folks to fuck that up for me by making me see miserable people who need someone to be paid to be their friend.
- I think that a lot of those people likely live in a very car dependent, suburban area, and therefore don't get any regular interaction with people outside of their immediate family.
  
  I live in a city, so I have regular infractions with people that I know when I'm out and about: I pop into the butcher shop, coffee shop or green grocer and talk to the employees I know. I walk the dog, and run into friends and acquaintances that live the next neighborhood over, etc. People in rural areas usually have similar sorts of relationships with people in the area.
  
  Contrast that with the suburbs, where neighbors may know each other to say hello to, but not much past that, and it's hard to build any kind of relationship with the barista at the drive-through Starbucks or any employees at the local Kroger superstore.
  
  You're probably right. I'm in the suburbs and I have to make an effort to do the things I mentioned. It's part of the trade off for living here.
  
  The sole exception was when we had the snowpocolypse a while back and no one had power. The neighborhood got together at my house and we cooked everything that was going to go bad in our freezers on my grills and made sure everyone was eating for days while we waited for electricity. I still don't know most of them more than to just say hello, but we came together when it mattered and that was cool.
- There are also the people who have bought into the whole define yourself by your work bullshit and they don't value their relationships outside of work.

Found the social vampire.

Nothing wrong with offsetting self hate by having people talk about shit that makes them happy.
- There is when they speak positively about stuff that is forced on everyone else.
  
  I'm quite confused. I ask people about their kids because their happiness cheers me up.
  
  The thing being forced on everyone else in this context is a requirement to work in an office instead of work from home. In that context, someone saying high quality human contact is important, implying that is a benefit of being forced into the office and forcing everyone else into the office makes them happy.
  
  Oh, I was just commenting on being one of the people that benefits from seeing others - a vampire. I don't think it's a justifiable reason to force people to go to the office.
  
  Benefitting from being social with others doesn't make you a social vampire. Almost everyone benefits from socializing, to the point that it is assumed to be a shared human trait.
  
  A social vampire is someone who preys on others socially, frequently by forcing others into social situations they don't want to be in. Forcing someone to work in the office so there is someone to be social with is a sign of someone being a social vampire.

you've never had an office job in your life, have you?

Have you heard of the sociological concept of the third place? One can absolutely have their human contact in places that aren't home and work.

Of course you can. And you can have human contact at work, which makes work a lot better.
- Not if you're depressed by the fact that you're losing 2h a day going to the office, wasting 30$ in parking fees and know that your pet is back home stressed out from being left alone for 10h.
  
  This thread is about occasional meetups at work, not daily
  
  So? Even going one day to the office is enough to make some people feel stressed out and depressed. I'm not even talking about people who need specific accommodations that they have at home but aren't provided to them at the office.
  
  That's unusual. You shouldn't be "stressed and depressed" from that. Don't get me wrong, I love WFH, but being unable to enter an office at all is not common.
  
  I think you underestimate the quantity of people that don't feel good about having to show up to work in person or take part in meetings or have to deal with in person social interactions.
  
  Heck, in the grand scheme of things it's more unusual to have to interact with tens of people you didn't choose to interact with because your employer said so.
  
  Am I? I mean I wouldn't be able to tell, of course, but I find that hard to believe. I'm not particularly extroverted myself but it's fine for me. The only reason my team doesn't come in is because of the commute time. And we're IT, not like marketing or HR.
  
  Also "depressed" and "don't feel good" are very different in scale.
  
  you’re losing 2h a day going to the office, wasting 30$ in parking fees and know that your pet is back home stressed out from being left alone for 10h.
  
  Holy fuck. No kidding.

What does that have to do with office hours?

Some people have no life outside of work. When you live in a country where you need several jobs to make rent and afford food, I'm guessing this is the standard.

Edit: gee, I guess I hit a nerve? For the record I'm from the country where working hard is illegal, as the joke goes. And very badly that we have antiallergique laws to protect our rights to have a life outside of work. And even here we have to fight tooth and nails to get WFH :/
- Yeah, but you have to walk on eggshells when talking to office coworkers. If you're wfh, you don't have a commute eating up your schedule and have more free time for friends.

If you can confidently say that your work interactions are "high quality" then I envy you lol. Work people and real people are two different sets of people to me.

What do you envision "high quality human contact" to be?

One that you can close with alt+f4, or the big red 'x' in the top right corner

You forgot the "/s" !!

Obligatory on Lemmy l'est the illiterate dogpile brigade strikes!

No "/s" necessary. That notation is for lazy writing. If the OP was being sarcastic, it was poorly communicated and deserves the condemnation. Sarcasm's risky. Do it well and it's hilarious. Do it poorly and get flamed. That's the gamble.
They were serious. Who's illiterate now? /g
- Oh noes, I forgot my "/s" !
  
  Their illiteracy remains intact!

I appreciate your optimism and it's the correct approach. I think the consensus is it's optimistic.