As companies cut costs and wireless technology improves, we’ve seen a handful of co-workers get pushed into permanent work-from-home status. The company shaves off some overhead, and the worker avoids commuting costs–and hassles–as he or she sets up the home office.
So here’s the hypothetical question for ya, dear readers: If you were presented with the opportunity to permanently work from home, would you do it? Granted, the notion of working from home now and then is a favorable one, a mini-vacation from the rigors of commuting. But would you opt to do it full-time?
On the plus side, you’d save that $250 or whatever (and rising dramatically!) a month in commuting costs. You’d avoid the day-to-day humiliations of commuting–a seat on the end of the Stench Bench, the middle seat between the cellphone yakker and the buffalo wings eater. You’d take back that two or three hours a day. You would not have to wear a shirt with a collar for weeks on end. Or any shirt, for that matter.
You’d get more family time.
Then there’s the not insignificant issue of, ya know, guys trying to bomb our city.
On the downside, you would not set foot in the Greatest City in the World each day, and get to witness all of its sites, including some of the most pulchritudinously blessed people on the planet. You’d inevitably lose touch with your City Friends. You’d sever that tenuous tether to the city, and be a full-time Suburban Person.
And you’d get more family time.
I want to hear from readers on this one. If you could skip the commuting altogether and go full-time from the home bureau, would you cut your ties to Gotham? Hit us in the Comments section.
UPDATE: The NY Times’ New Jersey blog picked up the story and has some interesting comments from readers.
Trainjotting 
some would say, that with the onslaught of the Blackberry and mobile devices, most folks are already working-from-home-train-lunch-teeball practice, so the regular workday has expanded it’s orbit into the twittersphere.
some folks have taken it a step further, with SECOND LIFE and Virtual Business, etc..
I’m tempted by the lure of more time with my suburban family, but I couldn’t work full-time from home. Too much of my work depends on interacting with my colleagues in the main office. I spend most of my office day with my nose to the grindstone so I can catch that 6:29 and get home in time to put my son to bed, but I pick up enough quality colleagial time to make it worthwhile.
I know it’s near impossible to get much done when it’s just me and the boy at home. But if I could talk a few of my colleagues to open a branch office in one of the many bargain-rent offices in my suburban town, I’d be all over it. I’d probably get a few more minutes of family time in the morning, and I could race home if, say, a thunderstorm was going to flood my basement, but I wonder if I would get home any earlier than I do now.
Written on the blessed 6:29.
Telecommuting was offered at my workplace just prior to them letting me go. Instead of cutting my ties to Gotham, I’d be in the Gotham Annex and not set foot in the Greatest City in the World, Norwalk, Connecticut. I wasn’t for it myself, I needed the desk to spread out working with maps, and also I think I would have been easily distracted at home. Even though I had the farthest commute by far of my coworkers, I wouldn’t have given it up.
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I’d kill to be able to work from home full time.
working at home is always the best, you are always at the comforts of your home while earning ”