The lease is signed. That bill isn’t going anywhere—lights on or off. So what is the business case for the rest of it? Utilities. Security. Parking. Office supplies. On-site staff. That is variable overhead layered on top of a sunk cost, all to get employees into seats to do exactly what they were doing remotely — at their expense.

Roughly half of current office leases won’t expire until 2028, and a third of companies openly admit real estate — not culture or productivity — is driving the mandate.

Quantifying knowledge-worker productivity is vague on a good day, and the research just supports whoever signed the check. Instead of buying collaboration, executives got Quiet Quitting, Coffee Badging, and an exodus of top talent with options.

If the goal is productivity and fiscal responsibility, the math doesn’t work. If financing attendance theater was the mission—done and done.