If my time's worth $50 an hour, it'd have to be a damn good free lunch or a damn short commute for the free-lunch-for-unpaid-commute trade to be a good deal.
Don't forget the huge benefit of lunch just being there.
I spend a lot more time dealing with food now (cooking, cleanup, groceries) than I spent on my commute. I could go to a restaurant, but if I don't want to eat the same thing every day, getting there and back and waiting for the food is going to take more time than my commute, especially if I do it for more than lunch.
Even purely from a time perspective, free-lunch-for-unpaid-commute is an EXCELLENT deal in my case. I can totally see that being different if your commute is longer than 30 minutes.
I kinda agree, except that I actually like cooking.
Even still, I've been working later (7pm approx) as I've started with a company based out of California (I'm in Ireland), which sucks for eating food.
Slow cookers/crockpots are kinda ace, you can dump all the ingredients into it in the morning, and have a meal when you finish work. As a bonus, the smell of the food is nice in the afternoons.
I mean - I'm not really arguing that you should commute just for a free lunch. If anything - I was making a bigger argument in regards to the office space part. I'm fine with the lunches at home right now. (I can only blame myself for the poor lunch options on any given day) The $2,000/month that I'm looking at spending just to have office space is a bit of a bigger deal, imo...
