People in the office constantly use the child effect. Leaving early, arriving late, popping out in the middle of the day because both parents work and the kid needs to go to the doctor/be picked up from school etc. I witness it all the time, and will probably also use the same opportunity when needed.
I'm not calling people insane who work those hours. I'm saying it's insane that this behaviour is considered normal.
You like your job, and that's good. And hopefully you will feel the same way in another 10/20/30/40 years.
Many, many people don't, yet because of the way our world works they have to keep plugging away at something they don't like, losing a phenomenal amount of their life, with a couple of gaps (holidays, weekends) thrown in as a treat. Not many of those gaps are really sufficient for pursuing anything of significant value. And the biggest gap, being at the end of life, when the bodys and minds best years are behind it.
People who work in under-stimulating jobs, and people who work with something they're interested in/passionate about or something they trained all of their life for, all feel this way at some point. Such a working schedule (which as I said is lucky, as many people work more than that) takes away so many other opportunities in life. It also has a severe effect on health. The lack of exercise and poor nutrition (you know when you finish work sometimes and you can't be bothered cooking, so you order takeout) we see in the Western world today has led to soaring obesity and overweight levels which has huge implications for society at large.
If you gave most people the choice to cut their working hours down, or to cease working entirely, I think they would take it (unless they needed money). I think most people would want to work to some degree (3/4 days a week), but if we started from scratch, nobody would choose to work 5 of 7 days a week, half of the daily waking hours (plus travel and the other bits, as well as the hours lost to rest and recuperate for the next day).
I can't see many people dropping work entirely, as it's a good way to have a sense of purpose. But it's hard to find a purpose in many jobs, increasingly so as everything gets automated. Remember, for every person that is lucky enough to work with something interesting, many more people are sat bored out of their mind waiting for the end of the day. There really isn't enough stimulating work to go round everybody.
You might be a good hard working person, but many people procrastinate simply because they don't enjoy their job. They'll procrastinate working from home, and they'll procrastinate at the office. The average office isn't a high surveillance environment. Many of your colleagues are probably browsing Reddit, Hacker News, Facebook, news websites etc. right now.
And to add to that, the physical and mental health implications and other points I mentioned, as well as points others have made about environmental damage from car commuting / congestion.
None of this should be normal. If we started from a point in time of people working less, as opposed to almost all the time (in the Industrial Revolution), it would be considered crazy if somebody suddenly came up with the idea to get everybody in an office 5 days a week. But it's considered normal and acceptable because it's a step down from the insane working practices of the times that came before (Industrial Revolution, 6 days a week, kids working in factories).
