I know for many it was a nightmare, but as an introvert it was amazing. I was an "essential worker" so I still had to go into work a few days a week, but the office was most empty and wfh was amazing. Oh and the no traffic thing was chefs kiss.
When companies decided that COVID was costing them too much in profits, and workers couldn't be micro-managed from home or on a rotating office schedule, is when things went to shit.
Not OP but the CEO at my previous company decided that we, software developers, would not work from home. So he used all the legal loopholes to make sure we were at the office most of the time.
The list of "essential workers" was fairly big depending on how businesses wanted to interpret things. On top of service type jobs, any job that did anything for the government, or any of its contractors or suppliers, were all considered "essential". Anything that dealt with first responders or the like were considered "essential" as well. And all of those businesses have to some degree people that need to work in an office to support them.
Not OP, but I worked in an office where we had to scan documents off of microfilm, which isn't something that can be done at home. Also, the office would receive paper mail with paper checks and that had to be open and scanned into the system so that the people working at home could process those documents.
There are plenty of industries where people are generally less productive WFH than in an office with other people. My coworkers distract me all day, but it's a lot easier to get or give help when we're in the same place. WFH was nice for a couple months, but I'm glad it's mostly over. Once we setup the capabilities to WFH we did keep them, so now we can WFH in an emergency or something.