Take it from someone who has telecommuted since 1995, there is nothing as gratifying as talking to your boss and clients in your underpants.
The work-at-home model is booming right now. Corporations are starting to see how home-based work helps to attract and retain valuable talent while simultaneously cutting costs associated with maintaining large brick and mortar facilities.
Still and all, competition for at-home positions is stiff. The number of employees yearning to telecommute greatly exceeds the number of telecommuting positions available. The allure is certainly understandable. Home-based employees not only get to spend more quality time with friends and family, they save tons of money on things like gas, vehicle maintenance, clothes, make-up, shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant. In addition, working from home reduces the chances of being charged with a daytime DUI or dying in a car crash in a Starbuck’s drive-thru line.
So what can you do to get a leg up on the telecommuting competition? What strategy can you employ to compel your company to kick you out of the office ahead of your colleagues?
The answer: Be good enough at what you do so that management cannot afford to lose you, but annoying or repugnant enough so that nobody can stand to be around you.
I can’t help you with the former, but I can with the latter. Here are several proven ways to become impossible to work with face-to-face and thus earn a work-at-home opportunity.
Forego bathing and/or wear patchouli. Giving off a repulsive odor at work while maintaining your status as a top-performer is practically guaranteed to earn you the chance to work from home. NOTE: This method does not apply if you work for Greenpeace. In fact, going shower-less and wearing patchouli is a surefire way to get promoted to upper management at Greenpeace, which will require you to work in an office environment until you quit, retire, or get shot by an multinational oil company executive.
Find Jesus — and introduce him to everybody. If you’re serious about working from home but aren’t prepared to do B.O., try J.C. Developing a powerful personal relationship with the alleged son of the alleged God and relentlessly recruiting others to do the same will turn you into a remote employee faster than you can shout “He is risen!” Unless, or course, you work for one of the Republican Presidential candidates, in which case you’ll likely be named campaign manager.
Close your Facebook account. Nobody wants to work with somebody who’s so far on the fringe of society they could be deemed dangerous. Not having a Facebook account is like not having a navel — it will cause fear, unrest and distrust among peers and management, but cannot legally be cited as grounds for dismissal. By being figuratively and literally “off the wall”, your boss will have little other choice but to allow you to do your job from home, where, as an added bonus to the company, your productivity will skyrocket since you’ll no longer be interrupting your workflow every 15 minutes to post status updates.
Achieve self-actualization. The only thing more uncomfortable than working with somebody who isn’t on Facebook is working with somebody who has reached their full potential as a human being. Once your superiors see that you greatly surpass them and everyone they know in terms morality, creativity, confidence, loyalty, problem-solving, open-mindedness, and mental and physical health, the very sight of you will make them sick. Of course, they’ll also acknowledge you are invaluable to the organization. In other words, welcome home. 
