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The company, which employs about 11,000 at its Research Triangle Park campus, has tried to mitigate this problem with "mobility centers," communal spaces that it maintains wherever it has offices, offering desks, phone and Internet lines, and office equipment for the periodic use by home-based workers.

It has also promoted "IBM clubs" to encourage employee bonding. Club members have taken day trips to a zoo, traded cookie recipes and "gone to a race track and learned how to be a NASCAR driver," Pelino reported.

Among adults

For those who can't depend on corporate beneficence, they can rent a desk or office in communal work spaces all over the country. The Regus Group, a Dallas-based company that rents temporary office space around the world and has 17 locations in Manhattan, has been doubling its American business every two years, according to Guillermo Rotman, the company's chief executive for the Americas. In addition to cubicles and individual offices, its spaces all have business lounges with sofas, armchairs, Internet ports, coffee machines and companionship for those seeking it.

One Regus client in New York, David Robertson, said he had been looking forward to working at home from his Lower Manhattan apartment when he took a job in 2006 with a company that licenses images from college sports events. He lasted less than three months.

"There seemed to be a lot of distractions," he said, "whether it was my children, or the refrigerator, or some home improvement project."

His company pays about $1,000 a month for the cubicle he chose over an office with a closing door because it presented more opportunities to socialize. He now wears a suit and tie to work when he wants to, and enjoys the reassuring cadences of the 9-to-5 world, as well as the camaraderie of his new office mates.

"It's not like they're best friends," he said of his fellow business lounge denizens and the Regus staff members who are there to support them. "But they're adults you can have a conversation with."

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