I would be inclined to agree with you, but this just isn't true in my case and many other cases - usually the people who care the most are the ones I have to work with the least. When I have a meeting, I suck it up and come in on time. But otherwise, there really is no reason I even have to be physically in the office. There are benefits to it, and I like being in the office because it lets me interact with people in ways that I think makes me better at my job, but really I could be on the other side of the world and it'd be fine.
We still ape the rituals of our industrial revolution predecessors simply because no one tried anything else.
>usually the people who care the most are the ones I have to work with the least.
Its not necessarily rational - or else if it were, we wouldn't have to deal with this at all, and everyone could just work whenever they felt like it. This is an ingrained, subconscious agreement that we all work as hard as we can and nobody slacks off - alas, having schedule conflicts are an easy way to say "I don't think you work as hard as you should" .. and the corollary: "I don't think I should have to work as hard as you think I should" ..
We still ape the rituals of our industrial revolution predecessors simply because no one tried anything else.