HOME WORK

Regarding Jonathan Gold’s column on telecommuting (“Working It Out,” Three on the Town, May 1): A telecommuter’s employer does know that the employee is working--more so than most employers. Rather than merely filling a chair or punching a time clock, a telecommuter has agreed with the boss to produce a certain amount of work. The quality of that work is then judged on its merit, not by how long it took to execute it.

I telecommute because it means integrating work into all of life, rather than relegating it to an eight-hour block under fluorescent lights. If being in the suburbs while I edit three international consumer magazines, weed a garden, represent my area for Women in Communications, lay out a newsletter for the Telecommuting Advisory Council and teach an adult literacy student means that I’m holing up and missing out, so be it.

MARIAN K. CASTINADO

Sylmar