Can workaholism be encouraged?

To me there are only two coding "highs" worth having:

1. The fifteen-minute (or so) high that comes from fighting (and fighting and fighting) but ultimately vanquishing a gremlin.
2. The high that comes from falling into the vortex of the raw act of creation, and losing oneself in it for hours on end.
   

Because my debugging skills have vastly improved over the years, and because distractions are an occupational hazard in Cubeville, neither happens to me very often. As a mental game, I try to pinpoint what percentage of my current salary I'd be willing to trade for a soundproof office and the privilege of being able to ignore the phone and email. That number varies pretty widely, depending on the day/time. But it occurs to me to wonder if any other cube-dwellers are like me. In other words, wannabe workaholics whose "addiction" is frustrated by the work environment.

Sure, you can foster a workaholic culture through traditional means. The threat of firing--particularly in the depressed job market--will work for awhile. Sometimes workaholism comes with the territory: Both programming and investment banking have (or had) reputations for being "warrior cultures." Thus, managers in those industries could reliably expect 60-, 80-, and 100+-hour workweeks from their underlings, all the result of pure machismo. Huge incentives for equally huge performance might work for some in just about any industry.

But what about everyone else in Cubeville? Apart from being able to concentrate on what I'm being paid to do, other things that make me more inclined to stay at my desk (real or virtual) rather than leave it are:

• Is there a refrigerator where I can stash my lunch, or do I have to go/order out?
• Can I access email from outside the office?
• Better yet, can I remote into my desktop from outside the office?
• Best case scenario, can I remote into my desktop without having to fire up my Windows computer?
• If I have to stay late and (inevitably) get the munchies, is there anything besides junk food in the vending machine(s)?
• If I have to make a private phone call, do I have to go to another part of the building entirely?
• Can I flex my hours between weeks so that I'm not cleaning my filing cabinet and/or hard drive just to make the sacrosanct 40 hours one week and leaving stuff half-done the next?
• Am I working in the "cliquey" kind of office where people go on break in herds? Because it's rather disruptive when an entire herd disappears.

Those kinds of things are the difference me being on a first-name basis with the folks who clean the office, and not knowing them from Adam/Eve. Maybe this is just me being me (i.e. weird). I don't know--take it for what you will.

But it seems to me that getting extra productivity from the folks who make a business work doesn't have to cost that much. You just can't let the efficiency-freaks take over. Because "efficiencies" come with a price, sometimes up-front (mostly when you're talking about equipment or software), but with people the cost (in my experience) is ongoing. The underlying problem, of course, is that the true cost of "efficiency" most often doesn't appear as an itemized debit/credit on the books. But it does find its way to the bottom line.