In reality, though, building A might be poorly-suited to work because of children, pets, or other people, or it might be located in an area that's very noisy during the hours in question, or it might be maintained to a different standard of cleanliness, one not conducive to focus, or it might have poor connectivity options available, or...
In reality, building B is the destination for many people working on the same or related projects, so people focused on the same thing can focus and share information easily, and people focused on similar or related things can focus and share information easily. The single-use environment is oriented entirely toward the work expected, without having to support any other uses. Equipment failures can be easily handled because of onsite spares. Connectivity is assured. Comfort is assured. There are likely more meal options in the vicinity, given the nature of office buildings vs residential areas. And so on.
Personally, I prefer to work from home, and I have a dedicated workspace with a 1GB fiber connection and no pets or young kids underfoot, so I don't have a commute, which averages 30 minutes where I live. But it doesn't seem ridiculous or illogical for companies to expect employees to show up at work, and many people seem to prefer separating the two.
Different people have different life experiences, for sure, but it turns out that there are many, many logical reasons why people might work from offices given a choice.
In short, you've completely ignored the entire content of my last comment, which is unfortunate.
And yet again: I love working remotely! Given a choice, I'll never work from an office again. Although I also felt that way from 2008-2018, and then ended up working in an office for a year or so until the pandemic, because one doesn't always have an easy choice.
I have both, and it's a joy that I can take breaks throughout the day to see the people that matter most to me (and my pets, who aren't people...but still matter)
Don't know where you live and work, but that's not the case for me. In most buildings I've worked in, aircon/heating switches off around 6pm. And I certainly don't leave my home heated while not in it.
Of everything wrong with modern society, the inefficiency of having separate home and office buildings ranks pretty low imho.
Another way to look at this inefficiency is to imagine how much cheaper (and, on average, bigger for an individual) housing could be if we had no need for offices. The inability for the young people to buy their own place seems to be universal in (at least most of) developed world (Australia, Canada, USA, UK, Ireland, EU, NZ, Japan, urban China, ...).
The cultural impacts of that change are pretty interesting as well, though that sounds like a thesis topic to me.
We even fly in the folks who are truly remote - they don't live in the same metro area or even the same state. It's still a lot cheaper and more energy efficient than commercial real estate.
...which caused huge issues with moisture and air quality. The buildings were designed to have forced air circulation 24/7. Changing it to 12/5 just messed up everything.
It would be a better benefit to society to turn most of these office buildings into apartments.
Eventually the heat will get in, and then you need to run thr system to get it back down, which could take hours.
But I do work with people that have one hour commutes, each way. For them, that's 520 hours a year - or almost 3 MONTHS worth of working hours, just to sit in a car. And not all are blessed to have public transport - so that two hour commute means eyes on road and hands on the wheel.
We haven't even touched on things like fuel, tollbooths, vehicle maintenance, etc.
its funny cuz so many people think "oh ill leave early and beat traffic" that you are often better off waiting until like 6pm.
i still cant believe how many WV plates i see on 270 on any given work day. i hope i never end up in a commute like that
But I'm willing to do it 1-2 times a week if there is need. Some things are just better and faster to do in person. Brainstorming and onboarding new employees being the two big ones.
The pure fact that it provides increased economic activity and therefore is able to support different jobs and the second/third order consequences of those makes perfect sense to me.
In your stay at home model, what would all those people do instead?
One way to think about offices is that they are appealing for much the same reason that people demonstrably prefer to live in urban areas instead of rural areas. Over time, people flock to cities because of the efficiencies of having many people in a concentrated area. In many ways, the same thing is true with office jobs.
People living in suburbs or exurbs shouldn't expect to have a dozen eateries within a few blocks of their home, but it's quite common to have those options at work. The economics works because there are many more people per square mile or meter at the office than at home.
Personally, I keep groceries in my house, and almost never go out for lunch, but most people eat lunches out, and offices make that easier.
(it hints at that there is something wrong with such logic).