TL;DR, employers are often penny wise and pound foolish.

One morning, my vehicle had a potentially life-threatening condition that I needed fixed before I could drive to work. I was 3 hours late but made a productive day of it. Plus I had stayed late after work, for no pay, a couple of nights because I have the kind of work ethic that compels me to do weird stuff like that occasionally.

When the time clock report came out it showed I was 3 hours short for the pay period. I brought up that I had "paid it forward" a few weeks prior and asked for an exception based on that. I was told that a) all "extra" work had to have been approved prior to doing it and b) that pay period had already passed, so no, I'd need to make up the hours. Being pretty miffed at being so nickled-and-dimed, and for being expected to drive to work in spite of the possibility of losing my life, I just had them take it out of my time off.

Fast forward to my latest monthly review: After another potentially life-threatening vehicle breakdown and fix, I decided to ask whether I could have a couple of telecommute days per week to offset fuel and mileage to recover the repair cost for the wear and tear on my vehicle. The answer was "No, because then everyone will want to work from home and then we'd have no way to know if they're really working."

On that same day I got an offer for doing the same job at another company for 100% telecommute and at nearly twice the salary. I turned in my resignation two days later. Now they're scrambling to try to replace me.

What's a good place to telecommute from besides home? Starbuck's? McDonald's? Library? Beach? Park?