I go into the office 2-3 days a week. It feels like I’m walking into a mall. Not the high end mall for the hoity toity people either. This feels like the middle-class mall I went to when I as a kid. The one that still looks, feels, and smells like it did when I was a kid.

You know what that mall is like in 2026. No one is there. The food court is…well, we can find something to eat when we leave. The primary function of the restroom is to give homeless people a safe place to clean up. It’s mostly void of activity, but there are still a few stores open and refusing to understand that people aren’t going to show up again tomorrow to rekindle the mall magic of the 1980s.

The guy with the big office at work is like the big box store. He can’t get his mind around the fact that things have permanently changed. Anything he’s selling can be bought online (from my house) at a better price. Some are still handy for administrative things in the same way that Kohl’s is handy for Amazon returns, but that’s about it.

The folks who sporadically populate the cubes, forced into hybrid work, are like Spencer Gifts and Foot Locker. I mean, yeah…they’re still there, but it doesn’t feel like that they feel like they belong.

Then there are the die-hards that come in every day and decorate their cubes as if nothing has changed. Their entire operating system is built around the in-office model. These folks are GNC.

I’d like the mall to make a comeback, but the biggest reason is so that my kids could have that experience and we could share it. I’d probably go once or twice myself for nostalgia, but would probably get my fill pretty quickly.

That’s how I’d feel if this office was full and bustling again: “Yeah, great…I remember this. But I don’t need it anymore.”

The mall is the way it is because no one wants the mall. You could make the argument that we need the mall (or something similar to it) as a society I guess. But the problem is that people don’t believe there’s a need.

It’s a sales problem. And the mall and the office are not doing a good job of marketing their products.