Ever since the cost of gas surpassed $4/gallon in my neighborhood, I’ve been doing a covert experiment. Whenever I fill up my gas tank, I discreetly observe the other gas station patrons and do you know what I see? Not a single smiling face. I even saw a guy grab his chest as though experiencing a heart attack when he saw that the total for his gas was over $75. Gas prices are jumping faster than frogs in a pot of boiling water, and we’re all feeling the burn.
I read an interesting article in the LA Times today that speculates that the only way for many of us to emerge from the obscene gas-price-crunch may be to start working from home.
I think this idea has merit to a certain extent. After all, if it costs a substantial portion of your paycheck just to get to work, how worthwhile is it to keep commuting? Thanks to the proliferation of efficiency-promoting products such as BlackBerrys and laptops with wireless access, work is easier to do from home than it’s ever been before.
Obviously, there will always be jobs that can’t be done from home (I doubt it would work very well to have doctors try working from home, for instance) but there’s no doubt that more of us could probably benefit a great deal from the freedom to work from home some, if not all, days of the week.
If this idea gains traction, I can easily see work as we know it shifting as well. Two well-known bloggers, Cali and Jody, frequently write about something called a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE.) The basic premise behind this idea is that work is measured in terms of results, not time put in. This means that if you’re capable of doing your job in 30 hours/week instead of 40, you’re entitled to do with your extra 10 hours as you wish.
This means a lot of people would need to start getting a lot better at relaxing! Think about it: if the average person spends 38 hours/year driving to work and who-knows-how-much time at work pretending to be busy, how much extra time would they have if they worked from home and could stop when the work was done?
Of course this is all “what-ifs”, but I suppose the idea that rocketing gas prices could trigger a nationwide shift toward healthier working habits intrigues me. What do you think? Do you think the gigantic gas prices will inspire more companies to allow their employees to work from home?
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