It’s not that it’s super hard to bring your own lunch, but it’s definitely hard-er. People just get mad when their employers won’t recognize that there’s a difference between wfh and commuting.
I think the primary issue though is that it incentivizes businesses to only hire people who live nearby. On the one hand that’s good because it’s good for the environment, but on the other hand it means I can’t decide to move further away from my employer without risking being fired. This is a bigger problem if your house has multiple working adults.
We could mitigate that by forbidding companies from firing employees who move further away but stay within some reasonable distance, but that then creates an incentive to move as far away from your job as possible to make that extra income.
So, how do you compensate employees for their commutes without restricting where they can live or creating an adverse incentive?
Eh, showering every day is bad for your skin and uses a lot of water. I work from home and definitely don’t shower every day especially if I’m only going to be leaving the house to walk my dog.
xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas ( xkcd.com )
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'Wildly more expensive': Workers with in-office jobs spend about $31/day that they wouldn't working from home — here's what employers need to do ( finance.yahoo.com )
Bosses and workers still can’t agree on whether the commute is part of the work day, and it’s creating a $578 billion productivity problem ( fortune.com )