The commute is the part nobody is paying for
A mandate does not create the hours it consumes. It moves them, from the worker's day to the company's, and sends no invoice.
Every argument for the mandate is made in the language of culture, and every cost of it is paid in the currency of time. An hour each way is ten hours a week, unpaid, and nobody who signs the policy is counting them.
Add what the hour drags behind it. The fare or the fuel, the second car, the childcare that has to start earlier and end later, the lunch that used to be made at home. These are real expenditures out of after-tax pay, and the company that requires them reimburses none of it.
If presence is genuinely worth what its advocates say, then buy it. Pay for the commute, subsidise the childcare, shorten the day at both ends. A firm that believes the office produces value should have no difficulty paying for the thing that produces it. The reluctance is informative.
Then there is the timing. The mandates arrive loudest at companies that are also, separately and coincidentally, looking to reduce headcount, and a rule that a certain kind of employee cannot comply with is a layoff that does not have to be announced, funded or explained.
We have argued on this site that the office can be a fair trade when it is offered as one. A trade has two sides. This one has an instruction on the first side and a bill on the second.