Welcome back (or not)!

"We know many of you are eager to reconnect in person with your colleagues back in the office." Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Welcome back

The pandemic was your ticket out

Welcome back

To that same old place you complained about

With apologies to John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful, who wrote the theme song to Welcome Back Kotter, let’s start today’s newsletter by going back four short years, to when Apple opened its $5 billion headquarters in California.

Spearheaded by Steve Jobs in his last big project before he died, it’s straight out of Star Trek—a 21st-century vision of what a 23rd-century office might look like. The only problem, as many pointed out at the time, is that we’re not actually in the 23rd century.

People in the 21st century had to work there. Criticisms abounded:

• The glass doors were beautiful. But they were so perfectly transparent that seven people were injured on the first day the building was officially open, simply by banging into them. Low-tech solution: stickers.

• The layout included a 100,000-square-foot gym, which people lauded—but no on-site company daycare, which they cited as evide…