I love working at Yahoo!, but it seems lately that Yahoo! is creating more and more reasons not to do work while I’m here.

There’s the free, very nice gym for one. Personally I’ve never stepped foot in it, but lots of people do use it. They offer classes in yoga, aerobics, volleyball tournaments, and whatever. There’s the bocce courts, sand volleyball, and the bay trail for other recreation. I’m glad they want to keep us in shape. I bet it keeps the health care costs down.

Of course we have a subsidized cafeteria. Soda and gourmet coffee are free, so there’s no reason to get in your car and drive down the street to a local sandwich shop or Starbucks. On the way in, stop by and use the no-fee ATM, or pick up a birthday card in the Yahoo Mini-Mart.

Don’t bother going home to wait for the UPS guy. Have your packages shipped here and they’ll magically show up at your desk. Need to ship a package? You can do that here too.

You can go to school here. You can take classes in everything from Flash programming to managing your priorites to buying and selling a house.

Twice a month, a Winnebago with a full-service hair salon shows up and you can get your haircut right here at work. There’s also a dental winnebago that visits every so often. I’ve heard horror stories about that one. Yesterday “The Bike Doctor” showed up and provided bike-fixing services. On most Fridays, you can drop your car off to be washed while you work.

Notary? Check. Travel Agent for personal trips? Check. Foosball, Golf, Hockey, Rock Climbing, Running, Scrapbooking, Softball, Ultimate Frisbee, Volleyball or Mountaineering Clubs? Check. Discounts at HP, Apple, Sprint PCS, Ford, Office Depot? Check. Dry cleaning service? Check.

I guess the rationale here is that by giving us fewer excuses to leave campus, we’ll spent time more time doing work. Theoretically you could live here. You have food, shelter, showers, recreation, and a fat internet connection. You could even clothe yourself in Yahoo! from the Yahoo! Store. A couple of years ago, the employee Christmas gift was a nice sleeping bag so you could sleep (more comfortably) under your desk.

But I can’t help think that some people might spend more time doing this other stuff rather than working.

“That project plan I owe you? No sorry, I won’t have it today. I’ve got a financial knowledge class at 10, yoga at 11, lunch at 12, then I need to drop off my dry cleaning, get the car washed, rent some DVDs and do some shopping. How does next week sound?”

It’s something like this phenomenon I noticed in college which I refer to as procrastination by proxy. Hey, Steve and John are out playing frisbee and not stidying, so I can too. Julie’s chatting in the hall and she aces every test. I’ll go chat too. Of course you could do this all day long because at any one time, someone is always not going to be working/studying.

The latest reason to live at work is this DVD Station service, where you can rent DVDs from the Yahoo Kwik-E-Mart. The dumb part is that you have to browse and rent the movies from little kiosks next to mart, not browse from the comfort of your desk. I’ll keep my Netflix, thank you very much.

As long as they’re going to try to keep me here, I’m holding out for the opening of a Home Depot next to the parking lot. That would be really convenient for me and prevent me from running errands there at lunchtime. Then again, what could I possibly need at Home Depot if my “home” is Yahoo!?