To add to that, we had almost no free time during the week to ourselves. Commute, dinner, shower, bed. So what did we do? We borrowed personal time from our sleep time, always feeling foggy and tired. I would wake up and go "eh, nothing that a cup of coffee won't fix", and off I went.

I am the same way - 3 days I actually find invigorating. It cures that cabin fever. But back to back, five days, after the pandemic, it just feels like straight up abuse. And it's what it really is. We just TOOK it.

My father once pointed out that salary should be normalized against total work required time, commute included.

At 40 hours & 5 days / week in the office, even a 15 minute one-way commute is a -5.8% change in comp-per-work-time. 30 min is -11.1%. 45 min is -15.8%.