the office space

working hard or hardly working?

Jun 11, 2024

Though now I work from home1, producing podcasts and editing manuscripts2, my past is full of offices. Never in anything massively corporate, but I’ve done administrative work in medium to small offices which met varying levels of professionalism. As my resume says, I am detail oriented, a meticulous planner, a fast learner and quite competent so I really was exemplary at these admin roles, though they slowly, steadily leeched my soul and creativity from my essence. So much mundane busy work that restarted each day and I was always the problem solver, no matter how big or small the issue was. Now, I excelled at problem solving,3 but there’s only so many specialty lightbulbs one can research, only so many times one can make signs that are blatantly ignored, only so many call transfers one can transfer or papers one can print, copy, staple, shred or paperclip before you are ready to walk past the snack filled conference room you arranged and right out the door.

Let's take a quick jaunt down Memory Lane shall we? Once I had a temp assignment where I had to spend 8 hours a day for a week arranging a teetering pile of applications to be in a particular paper order within their file. And doing nothing else. Flight of the Conchords kept me company during that mind numbing week. At one office I’m pretty sure my bosses were having an affair at the hotel down the street during their daily 3 hour+ “lunch breaks”. At one office I was in charge of choosing the lunch spot everyday and wielded that small taste of power with an iron fist. One of my bosses told me in the interview that he was looking for Pepper Potts4, and I guess I gave pretty good Gwyneth as I got the job. In one of my jobs, I was in charge of practically all aspects of my bosses’ lives; booking private flights, ordering medications, drafting family correspondence, purchasing gifts for their wives, paying bills, researching whatever came to mind and of course, attaching files to emails because they just never could figure that one out.

Having all those experiences, and the many more that lurk deep in the vault, make the books this week that much more fun. Workplaces are bursting with juicy conflict, unique characters and their confined, proper space means there are rules and expectations just waiting to be flouted. These stories are all first person accounts of workplace shenanigans, idiosyncrasies, insults and indignities; the highs, the lows and the soul destroying. If you’ve ever worked in an office, watched The Office or quiet quitted I think you’ll get some joy and maybe even a sense of camaraderie from these books. Here our protagonists try to overcome their office based angst as they battle zombies, abusers of power and societal anxiety none of which is limited from 9 to 5.

Clock out, log off and explain in your ooo that you will respond to emails at a reasonable hour as you escape into one of these fictional workplaces.

SEVERANCE by Ling Ma

Candace Chen is a typical, disillusioned millennial stuck inside the office rat race, trying to make it in NYC and move past her confining upbringing. Dedicated to her own ennui, it takes a while before she realizes that a pandemic5 has been spreading; infecting most of the population to become “trapped indefinitely in their memories”, fevered and doomed to repeat menial tasks like answering phones, calling elevators and making coffee even as their consciousness dies and body rots. Candace’s immunity allows her to explore and photograph the eerie results of a dying city, posting the photos online as NYGhost and reawakening her artistic self before she eventually joins of a group of survivors whose intentions may not be in her best interest.

Part workplace satire and part dystopian survival story,6 chapters alternate between Beginning and End, pre and during/post pandemic. Laugh when the survivors Google survival skills before the grid goes down7, cry witnessing the fevered who are forced to type spreadsheets for eternity and nod along as you remember when our own cities looked like ghost towns as Candace processes her pandemic through photography. This story sticks with you, there are descriptions here I still remember years later. It isn’t your typical zombie tale either, there isn’t much, if any, gore. The plague symptoms are upsetting in their simplicity, their looped imitation of existence. (But is it really imitation when the meaningless, repetitive actions of the infected don’t look that much different than a regular office existence!?) Our protagonist starts out a bit immature, frustrating yet endearingly clueless as the world deteriorates around her but she’s got a terrific arc. This is skillfully written, smart, harsh, thought provoking and atmospheric with wise observations and includes moments of tenderness and true suspense.

The millennial pink cover is perfect.

Memories beget memories. Shen fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely in their memories. But what is the difference between the fevered and us? Because I remember too, I remember perfectly. My memories replay, unprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop.

NSFW by Isabel Kaplan

Our nameless and directionless protagonist is in her early 20s when her mom pulls some strings to get her an entry level job at a big TV network. She doesn’t really have the media expertise or cutthroat work ethic required, but she’s smart and a quick learner; how hard could it be? As she pretzels herself into this new environment, she begins to flourish playing their game while desperately clinging to the remnants of her moral compass. When she discovers dark truths lurking beneath the company’s flashy facade that directly affect her personal and professional life, she must decide what will give; success or her ethics. Will she succumb to the demands of this world and become “an active participant in (her) own oppression”? Does she have to abandon ambition to commit to her principles?

Funny and sharp, like a knife to the gut. We’ve got another unnamed protagonist here 8 whose rich internal monologue and worldview is unique and also everywoman. This initially reads as satire, before it eventually becomes quite real and heavy. I think the tonal shift is done well and its jarring nature is similar to life. One day you’re making dozens of copies of a shitty screenplay that you only realize later weren’t collated and the next, your own moral code is thrown into question due to the egomaniacal bosses you’re tasked with coddling. The main character’s conflicts are funny, relatable and realistic, not only in the professional sphere but within her family, relationships and choices. I identified with her attempts to justify and spin reality in order to avoid complicity within a system where she had hoped to enact change. This has terrific themes and dilemmas without easy answers which I enjoy in fiction. Not in real life though. In life, I like my answers easy.

I definitely saw some of my own experiences in these pages as I spent a semester on the Warner Brothers lot interning for a small production company and another few years as a personal assistant to some rich guys. My job was mostly to take on the neuroses of my bosses and all my stress stemmed from making their lives just that much easier. It was better if I could just intuit their demands and not have to be told. The stories I could tell… Like when my boss wanted an Americano from Starbucks, I had to bring a piece of paper with a line drawn on it so they knew the exact amount of water to put in. How did they land on this amount? Why was this the best way to express it? Why wasn't the usual Americano enough for them!?! Or another time when my boss didn’t want to have to carry his golf clubs on his flight himself (or check them?) so I was tasked with finding a box to fit them all in, individually bubble wrap them all for safety and Fedex overnight them to his destination so he would make his tee time. $$$. You try finding the box for this champagne problem. Or the time a fellow intern and I were harshly reprimanded for dividing the break room cupcakes in half so everyone could try a bite. I never saw my manager more incensed than when she saw these cut cupcakes. Why!? Was the boss afraid of sliced food!? They tasted THE SAME.

The look of gratitude he gives me for this, the ways in which I have learned to accommodate his neuroses. I suspect this has endeared me to him as much- if not more- than any of my more substantive work.

I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL by Natalie Sue

Jolene, an admin for the Amazon like company Supershops, has a lot going on internally. A strict loner, she cannot abide or understand her colleague’s general vibe and incompetence so she expresses her true feelings as footers in her emails, highlighting them in white to keep them invisible. Her little secret. Until she is found out and sentenced to sensitivity training and email restrictions. Her mandated courses are led by Cliff, a handsome and annoyingly friendly HR rep. But her emails? Somehow instead of being restricted, a technical glitch means she is now able to access her colleague’s emails and chats which gives her a first row seat to their private correspondence and some inspiration for a devious plan of her own. As she learns more about each of these colleagues as individuals and gets closer to the absurdly amiable Cliff, Jolene’s plans become less certain and her solitary life suddenly becomes more claustrophobic than comfortable.

One of my favorites of the year so far, this is up there right next to Margo’s Got Money Troubles and held my rapt attention from beginning to end. It is one of those books where I expected something predictable and simple, but instead got something layered and witty with real depth, mystery and emotion. Our charmingly belligerent heroine is complicated, dry, endearingly mean and utterly human and I adored being privy to her first person narration even when things got rough. She is slightly reminiscent of Eleanor Oliphant with her mysterious past, internal ‘don’t give a fuck’ energy, anti-social tendencies and judgey vibe. Like with Eleanor, I dare you not to love the difficult and strange, wonderfully weird and witty Jolene.

The quip volleying here is exceptional while humor and depression combine expertly to tackle themes of anxiety and mental health stigma along with all the little deaths and indignities of the modern workplace and the ludicrous realities we’re just meant to accept. I cackled out loud multiple times, almost cried a few and, though we know how some things must play out, the suspense was truly agonizing. Cliff and Jolene had fantastic chemistry and all of her growing personal connections were earned, funny and poignant; I especially loved Cliff’s carpooling as care and was tickled by the word “parkade”.

My minor quibbles are that this could feel a dash Hallmark-ey at times (the ending and Cliff is a bit too perfect) and the tone reads a bit younger to me than age 33, more like mid 20s. But, I completely loved this and read the entire thing in one sitting on a plane where I made my in-laws and husband sit all together in their own row and I sat alone across from them so I could be left alone with my ~~friend~~ book.9

Love the title, love the cover, love it all.

My legacy was taken down by a bowl of trout soup heated for one minute and thirty seconds on high.

Go ahead, share some of your own office related trauma so we can all commiserate. Any other office themed books you’d add here? Its fun to talk about books so