> a lot of people think that just by being in the office they are 'working' regardless of whether they are in fact getting anything done.

This is the part that annoys me the most. Managers pretend that Seat Time = Productivity when we all know that's not the case. I've watched people sit and talk for hours, then sit and browse the internet or play games for hours. We just had a group of people who were told to stop playing online Chess all day.

Forcing people to come into the office full-time is just management's way of making their jobs easier and making themselves feel better. In my experience, it's a substitute for doing other things that they should be doing, like reviewing code that their team has committed that week, talking to their team about what they're working on, what they're planning to work on, what challenges they're facing, etc.