Wodehouse on commerce

The following is an excerpt from "PSmith in the City" by P.G. Wodehouse. My empathy for Mike (the bank employee) stems from the fact that my feelings for commerce are no different. Let me bring it to the reader's notice that Wodehouse too used to work as a clerk in HSBC. Therefore, these emotions might be regarded as genuine.
"There are some people who take naturally to a life of commerce. Mike was not of these. To him the restraint of the business was irksome. He had been used to an open-air life, and a life, in its way, of excitement. He gathered that he would not be free till five o'clock, and that on the following day he would come at ten and go at five, and the same every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, all the year round, with a ten days' holiday. The monotony of the prospect appalled him. He was not old enough to know what a narcotic is Habit, and that one can become attached to and interested in the most unpromising jobs.
He looked through the letters he had stamped, and re-read the addresses. Some of them were directed to people living in the country…It made him home-sick, conjuring up visions of shady gardens and country sounds and smells…About now, if he were not in this dismal place, he would be lying in the shade in the garden with a book, or wandering down to the river to boat or bathe…Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in city office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon with what one has had for lunch."