Never, since every workplace I’ve worked in the last 40 years is or was restricted-access. I wouldn’t be able to get in the door if I wanted to.
I retired from the Bose Automotive System Division in 2017 after having led several high end Nissan and GM product lines. In 2018 I went to work for Nissan in the audio group.
My first trip to Japan was to meet with the Bose team that served Nissan Japan and North America and the manager of that team was my former boss, I was now his customer. My first order of business was to bring up the fact that my friend, the new Bose senior project manager on the team failed to buy me a beer as he had promised when I retired from the company (I had a go fund me account). He begged my forgiveness and offered to do anything to make it right, so I suggested the traditional Japanese practice of Hari Kari. He proceeded to pretend to jab a pencil in his eye and scream in agony his apologies. Good times, my Nissan mangers were floored.
I worked for a company for about 15 years, and was walked out when they learned I was considering a job at a competitor. About 8 years, 3 jobs and a cross-country move later, I got assigned to work on the account for the original company so had to visit several times, and was glad to see a lot of familiar faces that I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to. That job also brought me near to another workplace so I actually went in for a quick social visit - about 20 years after I had left. Some of the same folks were there, still doing the same things.
When I moved across the country, it was for a job where my company rented space from another company, and after a few years, the other company hired me - so I was “back at my old workplace” every day. We eventually got bought by a third company, and so I got three different paychecks working in the same building.
Nitpick: hara kiri.
I still have an account at the credit union I used to work for so I do go back there sometimes. They did tear down the old building and rebuild so it’s not the same office and I only know two people who are still there from my time there.
I also still sometimes shop at the grocery store I worked at as a teenager… does that count?
I don’t know if this counts, but I still go back to the cafe I used to work at in college almost 30 years ago. It has a different name now, but I still recognize it as the old cafe.
I was also a legal assistant for a year and a half for a pair of criminal defense attorneys twenty years ago. I try to visit them at least once a year to say “hi” and see what they’ve been up to. They’re in the same building, but moved down a few floors to a new office.
The vast majority of my life I’ve worked for myself, so no real place to return to. Those are literally the only places I worked at for more than two months here in the Chicago area. (I had one other job I worked at for a year and a half, but that’s in Budapest and doesn’t exist anymore.)
When I was still working, I had to go to a military installation where I had once worked at. This was about five years after I had left. I stopped by the old office, but the security practice had changed and the building now had access control to get inside. While I was at the door, a person walked up and asked me if I needed in. I told him that I used to work there and I was just trying to visit. It turned out that this person was someone that used to work for me for about three years, and we didn’t recognize each other until I told him my name. Ended up visiting for about an hour with him and a few others who were in the office that day.
Since retirement though, I haven’t been back.
A disgruntled former worker shot up a local business office and people were killed. Many other businesses responded by greatly tightening down on security. My place of employment responded by enacting several policies, one of which was that former employees were effectively banned from the building. Knowing that, I never tried to go back. I maintained friendships with several coworkers but over the years those slipped away too.
Then I ran into a former college buddy who just happened to be the general manager of my former place of employment. He proudly invited me back for “the nickle tour”. I figured he’d just pass me off to one of his underlings but he took me on the tour himself. He didn’t try to hurry me along at all. I felt honored.
I couldn’t believe the building. The outside remained pretty much the same with the exception of barbed wire topped security fence. But the inside was almost completely gutted with the exception of load bearing walls. About the only things they didn’t move were the toilets. They still have about 100 employees but only five or so employees that were there in my era. I hung with my fellow fossils a bit, chatted up some of the youngsters and it was all cool. I was invited to join a group of “alumni” which gets together for lunch a couple times a year. Been to a couple of their lunches now and it’s been great to reconnect.
Never.
I retired after 26 years with State Government.
I have never returned.
I’m told they tore the building down.
I wouldn’t know.
I retired from the IT division of a large company. We had around 300 employees in our facility. The campus was beautiful with woods, lakes, lots of wildlife. I loved taking photos there. I worked with a great bunch of people. Retired people would come back for baby and wedding showers, retirement parties, lunches in the picnic area. I fully intended to do the same. It turned out that my retirement party was the last one. January 2020. By April almost everyone was working from home. Eventually most of the space was given over to other divisions as the company consolidated facilities. I’ve never been back there. I was sad about that for a long time but I got over it.
I’ve visited some old schools a few times, but never an old workplace. Never even thought of doing so, despite being pretty nostalgic in general. If I’ve stayed in contact with people I used to work with, and I have, it’s always been kept completely separate.
I would love to visit the place where I was a co-op student in the late 1980s. It was a large R&D lab in Clarksburg, MD called Comsat. A futuristic-looking building with lots of land and trees around it. It’s still there, but I believe it is abandoned. If you have ever driven on I-270 between Frederick and Gaithersburg, then you’ve probably seen it.
I retired a few years ago from a local TV station. It’s about 30 miles from my home, and though I’ve driven by occasionally, I’ve never had the desire to drop in for a visit. I went to the staff-and-retirees Christmas party the first couple of years following my retirement and enjoyed catching up with people. The next year it was raining buckets that day so I didn’t go, and this past year I just didn’t feel like it. I may never attend another one. I keep in touch with the small group of people I worked with through Facebook anyway.
Most of the radio and TV stations I worked for have been bought and sold multiple times and very few are even in the same locations.
Depends on what you mean by “old workplaces” - I went back to the office I retired from once, to pick up my plaque and letter from the commmisioner. But I worked in at least ten locations and I would sometimes visit a former location while I was still employed by that agency.
For the most part, people who left would come by either because they had gone to work for an entity that we had dealings with or to attend a celebration (retirement , shower) for a current employee.
I have a friend who worked as a technician at the head end of the local cable TV company. So installing and maintaining all the magic gizmos that get the programs from satellite or internet or tape or whatever and sends them down the wires to everyone’s homes.
He spent most of his working years there in that one building. Which for obvious reasons would have been real hard for the cable company to relocate. All roads may lead to Rome, but all wires in that metro area lead to that one building.
He mentioned one day that during his career he got 6 different paychecks from 6 different companies doing the same work in the same building.
The place I worked for 15 years was a cable company and I may have been part of the transactions that caused that situation. We had systems all over that we’d buy and sell but the local team would stay to run them and I could totally see 6 changes like your friend experienced.
The three companies I worked in the same building for all made parts (sw and hw) of the set top boxes that the cable and satellite companies deployed.
Singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th Inning Stretch?
No, wait, that’s Harry Carey 
I worked at in an office of a company that closed. Some years later I was working with a charity on an event for them; their office was the same building & floor that I used to work in. Although they had their own layout, I was walking around like, this was here, that was there based on windows, pillars, & other non-movable parts of the building.
Other than that, I couldn’t get back into the location of anywhere I worked in my career unless someone let me in due to locked doors & not having a badge.
For me, considering I worked in several restaurants during high school and community college and still live in the area, several times a year. Most have changed names, but one restaurant is now owned by a guy who was a bus boy when I worked there.
My wife worked at the local Walmart so we go there on a regular basis.
At a factory I formerly worked at they had retires stop by during lunch to visit. The corporation had a security audit and basically “flipped out” when they found out these former workers were just freely walking in and out of the facility with no IDs, only that the front desk receptionist knew that they were former workers and allowed them in. Yeah, she got wrote up for for not following admittance procedures and the retirees were bummed that they could no longer visit.
I went back to the place I used to work right outside of Princeton when we went back to our old town for a visit. It had been sold, so I didn’t go in, but we also visited the education center down the road which was abandoned and falling apart.
The second place I worked at after I moved to California is now Meta HQ, so I’m not going there.
While I wouldn’t be able to get into the other places I worked, I do have lunch with my former colleagues even 10 years after my retirement.
Same for me. Plus I enjoy walking on the campus.