I heard a guy on a podcast talk about this exact thing, he called it the "hidden pay cut" of a long drive. He said people look at the salary and forget they're basically paying themselves to sit in traffic. Your 635 drive is a perfect example, that highway is a parking lot most days. Adding up gas, tires, oil changes, and losing three pickups a week with your kid, that $12k probably turns into way less. Sounds like you actually did the math everyone else just skips.

Does it really matter that much if one guy at the gym walks off annoyed though? I get what you're saying about "it depends" being true most of the time, but people want simple answers because simple answers are easier to act on. If you give someone four answers they have to do the work of picking one, and most folks just want to be told what to do so they can stop thinking about it. You not handing out rules saves you from blame, sure, but it also means you never actually help anyone make a call. Sometimes the kind thing is to just say "morning, based on your knee" and let them figure out the rest later.