If the boss is coordinating beers on Friday nights, it's pretty hard not to feel like your career will suffer if you don't participate.

This is something bosses need to understand in general—something that you mean to be low-pressure and optional is not going to come across that way to the people whose paycheck depends on your goodwill.

So if managers feel threatened they can't see or talk to their employees, they're just bad managers who suck at their job and should all be fired. But if an employee feels threatened that they don't get a beer one in a while that's a crisis that needs to be stopped by forcing everyone to work remotely in isolation. Got it. I'm sure that's your true reasoning and not just some flimsy excuse for wanting to WFH.

... I didn't mention WFH once. I can see this thread hasn't gotten less emotionally charged while I've been away.

>If the boss is coordinating beers on Friday nights, it's pretty hard not to feel like your career will suffer if you don't participate.

If you are forced to do these things, then your career is already suffering. A career is not a hypothetical future promise of a nirvana-job. It's the thing you live throughout your life, every moment of it.