Hand in the blender can be healed for a few tens of thousands of dollars and a year of rehab probably. Commute to office takes approximately one full month of human life every year, unpaid and uncompensated. So that's actually a very reasonable comparison. It's just most humans are terrible with estimating long term costs and benefits, so they tend to ignore the ridiculously insane cost of commute over whole career.
It's actually not, if you stop and consider the true cost of working and commuting to an office. It's just we're conditioned NOT to consider the true cost, so we externalize a bunch of the costs.
For example, you don't consider the CO2 from your car, or the time spent driving, or the risk of death. If you factor in just the time spent driving, suddenly smoking a pack a day is better for your lifespan than being in an office.
but subtlety is usually lost at the folks here and this comparison will at least be understood. then again - the thought of having to go back to the office is evoking a feeling not too different from anticipating something quite painful. too many colleagues are just unbearable and the waste of time having to commute unpaidly ... maybe i'd prefer a quick blender session for another year of home office even.
Thank you. Sure it was hyperbolic, but it was in response to the notion that maybe we’re all too shortsighted to see that we’d like full time RTO if only we’d try it. There are certain things I don’t need to try before knowing that I won’t enjoy them. I’ve worked in offices enough decades to have sufficient data: I strongly prefer WFH. “Maybe you’ll like it this time!” is weak sauce. I’m not a delicate flower who couldn’t RTO if situations demanded it. I would not help me do a better job for my company, though, and I don’t want to.
This is academic for me. I have an amazing job at a company all-in on WFH to the point we just downsized a physical office we were underusing. I hate seeing my colleagues get dragged back to legacy offices for no compelling reason though.
