If anything it’s people failing to consider commute times when looking for work that’s the issue not company’s requirements. Going they will pay me 10k more per year but I’ll spend X more hours a week commuting is effectively being paid to commute.
At some point I got a week more holiday than every other employee in the UK at my employer at the time because I was the only hire who had questioned a contract clause and gotten them to confirm my preferred interpretation of a woefully misleading clause in writing before signing, and when they later wanted to stick to the technicalities of how it was written I was able to just forward them an email from the COO confirming that in my case they'd agreed to my interpretation.
Most people seem to only pay attention to the headline amount, and then grumble about the consequences after the fact.
If I’m feeling up to it, I get another 30-40 minute walk in once it cools off in the evening.
I don’t mind driving in during the winter though, because then I don’t have to pay to heat my house (beyond 15C for the cat) for the day.
I love to go to the park with my kids. I love going to parties.
I don't like sitting in my car unpaid to do work that doesnt require sitting in the car unpaid.
On the contrary, not being forced into the office let's you choose your journeys.
I find this very unintuitive and even mentally rebel at the idea when I think about it, but I still think it's true.
But for example, consider three scenarios:
1. Work from home, with a consistent habit of going on a ten minute walk and reading for half an hour before and after work. 2. Commute with a ten minute walk and half hour train ride, with a consistent habit of reading on the train. 3. Same as (1), but family responsibilities and other distractions end the moment work begins and begin the moment work ends. 4. Same as (2), but spend the train ride doom scrolling.
For me (1) is best but also unlikely because there are too many other "choices" of what to do before and after work, so in practice I end up doing (3).
But option (2) of commuting by train would actually be better than (3) despite having less optionality! I would have more wind-up and -down time each day, and get more reading done.
But the risk of option (2) is that there is still too much optionality; instead of reading, I could scroll crap on my phone. Removing that optionality somehow - by getting a dumb phone or some other solution to keep myself from this bad habit - would be another improvement.
Clearly it would be better to make better choices without limiting options, but human nature being what it is, it often turns out better in practice to not have the other options at all.
In what other things is 1.4% considered "significant?"