Neighborhood ties are weakening. Only 20 percent of people socialize with neighbors several times a week, down from 30 percent in 1974. That means for many people, the neighbors they know best may be those across the cubicle wall. Not too long ago, Cheryl Kiser felt almost entirely disconnected from suburban Weston, Mass., where she lives, because she did almost all her errands around her workplace in Boston. Workplaces have always stood for more than a place to earn a dollar.
Work is part of our identity, an anchor in our lives.
But when work is your neighborhood, when you depend on your company to help solve many of life's problems, you're entering into a new kind of social contract with your employer. Help with child care may come to a halt if the company downsizes or merges. A hotline's tip sheet on finding a nursing home is a lot different than hearing a neighbor's own experiences. Kristen Thurber hobbles over to West Group's postal counter to mail letters one summer afternoon on a bandaged ankle broken during a family canoe trip. Her friends outside of work and family count just as much as her community at the legal information publisher, she insists.