Will Salesforce's in-person work mandate help downtown San Francisco?
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The rush hour backup of cars leaving San Francisco Tuesday night may have felt a bit different.
That's because Tuesday, October 1, marked the first day Salesforce required many of their workers to come back to the office in downtown San Francisco.
"This is the week, this is the week to come in," Chelsea Yocius said.
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ABC7 News spoke with Yocius and her friend Priscilla Yip at the popular 83 Proof cocktail bar downtown. Both work for Salesforce and both were back in the office Tuesday.
"I'm excited about it," Yip said. "I'm excited to connect with my coworkers again and be able to just see the people in the office and the in-person connection will be really valuable I feel like."
"Our teams are super, super flexible but they definitely want to see more in-person connections and you can already see in the downtown just how alive it's come even for this week with the new mandate," Yocius said.
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Both Yip and Yocius will be back in the office at least three days a week. Other employees say different teams have different mandates whether that be three, four, or five days back per week.
ABC7 News spoke with two additional Salesforce employees in the engineering department who said they like the new policy but it doesn't apply to them.
Bay Area Council's Jeff Bellisario is cautiously optimistic, saying the number of people coming back to downtown San Francisco has plateaued a bit over the past nine months.
"It's definitely a move in the right direction and will be helpful for small businesses in the area," Bellisario said. "More people are back obviously, but the more pessimistic part of me says, well who is really coming back and how often will they be coming back and I think that's the question that is still up in the air right now."
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BART officials say new ridership records were set on three separate days in September, but not due to regular downtown work, rather special large events like A's games and Dreamforce.
"Generally speaking our ridership has been very consistent without large events, but it's those special events that have really driven our peaks," said Chris Filippi with BART.
They're hopeful that new clean trains along with upped security measures will help make would-be train commuters feel more comfortable.
