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Fortune
Fortune
Steve Mollman

San Francisco CEO who's closing his $215 million company's upscale office lounge says return-to-work push is ‘fighting a losing war’

David Barrett United States Expensify San Francisco
San Francisco (Credit: Getty Images)

For the past six months, employees at the tech company Expensify in San Francisco have had a special in-office perk: an upscale lounge offering them free specialty cocktails and other drinks. From its 16th-floor office, workers could enjoy champagne or a draft beer while collaborating in a restaurant-style booth or working on laptops at the bar. 

But the lounge is due to close on November 1. The point, CEO David Barrett explained in a blog post on Wednesday, was to run an experiment.

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