When is a Telecommuter not a Telecommuter?

Possibly soon. Plantronics is sponsoring a contest in an attempt to coin a new phrase to replace the word “telecommuter”. The contest runs until October 24, 2008, so if you want to enter, no slacking.

Actually, if you go to the rules page, you’ll see they are officially trying to replace the word “teleworker”, however when I stumbled across the contest, it was via a third party blog that mistakenly said they were trying to replace telecommuter.

But let’s not split hairs here. Let’s applaud the effort, either way, since both telecommuter and teleworker sort of call to mind somebody sitting at home, with a cheap headset on, doing online sex calls or cold solicitations of other sorts. Which for me brings up memories of my first ever job, randomly calling strangers from the phone book, offering them a “free lawn evaluation” from a guy who called himself the Lawn Doctor. I wish I were making this up. I’m not. Sometimes I’m tempted to put Lawn Nurse on my resume.

At a recent meeting, we tried to cowork our heads around some possible suggestions. We’re still working on it. My mind keeps turning to sarcastic possibilities — big surprise there — like:

Cubicle Hater
Non-commuter
Commute-My-Ass-Worker
Misanthrope
Mine Sweeper Expert
Pajamaholic

My hunch is that these won’t fly. (Where has all the humor gone, people? Long time passing and all that…) But maybe you can come up with some entries of real weight. Please post your suggestions here — after you enter them, of course. We don’t want you to get scooped.

Grand Prize Winner gets a bunch of audio equipment valued at around $2k. Nine first place winners get a hands-free home office phone system. Don your thinking caps…