Only a handful of people I know still have landlines at home. It’s especially marked among people under 30, those of us who moved to the city and into a group house soon after college at a time when cell phones were basically mandatory. Maybe we’ve moved into nicer places since then, but who needs a landline? It’s just an extra expense that seems increasingly redundant.

But what about in the office? D.C. Wire reports that City Administrator Dan Tangherlini’s office is acting as a guinea pig for the D.C. government to see if it makes sense to stop paying for landlines at city workers’ desks. The theory is that if all employees already have cell phones and are often out of the office working on problems, paying for landlines is wasteful. It makes a lot of sense, and it would be pretty interesting if the city converted to only a handful of essential landlines. Then again, we can imagine a lot of city workers claiming their phone had died or they were in an area where they couldn’t get any service whenever they wanted to slack off. Make sure your employees have extra batteries, Mr. Tangherlini.

Photo by staceyviera