For meetings, the process typically was: 1. Try to book a meeting room for a group large enough, succeed about 80% of the time and scramble at the last minute other times. 2. Wait for someone to finish up their call. If someone super senior was in the room, my meeting was guaranteed to start whenever they felt like ending their meeting, which would be 5-10 minutes late. 3. Inevitably dial into a video conference because at least one member of the team is working in a different office, so not even everyone was in person anyway 4. Run out of time at the end and having to dash to my next meeting room late.
And this doesn't even account for the fact that getting quality heads-down time in an open office floor plan was nearly impossible.
Just take the good with the bad. Make in-person meetings mandatory for important events that require in-person collaboration like design sprints, brainstorming, launches, etc.
Well done.