Do you think the movie Office Space is in your top ten list? Does the TV series the Office make you laugh - however uncomfortable it gets? I have the book for you. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, has enough in it to make you laugh, take a closer look at your co-workers, and think a little about why we are really working anyway?
Ferris sets his tale in the 1990s - before 9/11, in an ad agency in Chicago. He has a wide range of character types - the cut up, the diligent one, the popular one with all the gossip, and if you have ever worked in a pressured environment filled with cubicles - you may have experienced some of the wackiness of this kind of office life. (Sometimes I think those days were a variation of an adult version of high school continued! Yeah, a bit scary!)
With a mixture of humor - the office pranks: the mysterious smell that turned out to be sushi taped to the back of a certain someone's bookcase, the radio stations that are changed each morning, and the various techniques used in looking busy for the boss, and with a mixture of pathos: the office mate whose young daughter is found murdered, the office member who dies and the threat of the boss having cancer, Ferris manages to make us care about this group. It comes to play when the corporate layoffs and cuts start happening and it starts spliting up the creative teams.
Some thoughts this book might leave you with - Who are those people you are working with? Is their office face different from who they are in their home lives? And what kind of work life do you want to have - since you spend so much time there anyway?
A very good read.
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