As an approximation, you could use AutoHotKey to have the key press sent every 200ms when an Explorer window has focus. ;)

Personally, I wouldn’t want to have it automatically, because sometimes you have really long file names, or other columns that can get arbitrarily wide. There would also have to be a configurable maximum column width.

Nah no workaround. I'll take the hit until I can switch to something better on my work PC. Several decisions Microsoft has taken make it more likely that I'll invest the time. May as well try to un-Microsoft my org (at least to the degree I'm involved) while I'm at it.