I know a CTO with plenty of wealth and space that sits at a kitchen table with a laptop instead of setting up a home work station.
I know information workers who have workplaces that would gladly pay for nicer monitors or keyboards but don’t bother to even request them.
I know a couple with a brand new house that has a miserably squeaky front door that could be silenced a half dozen ways in under a minute.
People of all kinds contortion themselves into knots, giving little notice to the daily, near constant twinge of their circumstances but don’t improve them.
One contracting job I had, on my first day one of my tasks was to do some grunt work right in front of the bathrooms. The men's door was squeaky as all hell.
"Oh don't worry, it's always done that."
I lasted as long as I could but I finally walked over to the shop crew and asked if I could borrow some WD-40. "I'll bring it back in 10 minutes."
10 minutes later it's all "Thanks guys!", "No problem", and "Wow you really did mean 10 minutes!". [Note: I'm a man so there was no problem me stepping into the men's bathroom to make the repair myself].
And the door never squeaked again. My sanity was saved; it turns out I would be doing a decent amount of grunt work in that same area over my contract.
If anyone else ever noticed, they never said a word. The door had always squeaked and literally everyone either didn't care or did nothing about it; it just was how it was.
As an aside, next time, see if there's a silicone lubricant or other lube spray available. WD is good for what it was designed to do, and is barely acceptable as a lubricant. Better than nothing though!
A kitchen table? That's way more fancy than I bother with. I do most of my programming work from a couch or a hammock. It's a feature, not a bug. I have a workstation with a fancy dock, keyboard and trackpad, but I never really feel like using it. I will, however, close every unnecessary popup that comes my way.
I know information workers who have workplaces that would gladly pay for nicer monitors or keyboards but don’t bother to even request them.
I know a couple with a brand new house that has a miserably squeaky front door that could be silenced a half dozen ways in under a minute.
People of all kinds contortion themselves into knots, giving little notice to the daily, near constant twinge of their circumstances but don’t improve them.
Tolerating ads is just one example of this.