When the world went remote in 2020, it felt like a permanent reset. Kitchen tables became workstations, Zoom replaced conference rooms, and the once-sacred commute was traded for a short walk down the hall. Yet five years on, something unexpected is happening: a decisive push back to the office. Call it the Return-to-Office (RTO) reckoning, a phenomenon reshaping the modern workplace with all the nuance, tension, and compromise of a cultural tug-of-war.
