I’m Virtually Popular!

My coworkers must really love me. They share every detail of their lives with me-every snagged stocking and lost set of keys, every extended vacation and fundraising endeavor. They remind me when it’s time to order business cards, invite me to join the basketball pool, and ask me if I saw the scamp who stole the stapler right off their desk.

Of course, most of them have no idea who I am. They wouldn’t, in fact, recognize me if I were crouched naked on their desks humming the theme from The Office. Because while I’m employed by several companies, I don’t occupy a cubicle at any one of them. I work at home, a freelance serf toiling solitarily at a cheap-ass desk in a drafty corner of my dining room.

But I’m connected to the staffs of various offices via group email announcements. So while I can’t gather ’round the water cooler to discuss politics and gossip about office romances, I get to “hear” whenever a fellow employee is, say, looking for duct tape to fix his shoe. (Which is weird.) But it’s not uncommon. Statistics show 45 million Americans worked at home in 2006, and the number’s expected to top 100 million by 2010.