A collection full of office disasters, ideal for readers who need a refresher course on the consequences of impropriety.
A debut collection offers bawdy true stories of workplace misbehavior.
Lawler draws from a 30-year career in corporate employee relations to share these fact-based vignettes chronicling red-faced embarrassments at work. He believes most “Americans are bound together by three common experiences: working, sex, and intermittently bad judgment.” The 32 tales he shares—some no longer than a page in length—reinforce this opinion and explore themes of the interpersonally inappropriate, the messy office affairs, and the self-sabotaged careers at the “intersection of Bad Choice Boulevard and Sex Drive.” The stories’ titles alone allude to what’s in store for readers (“Nipple Clamps in the Mailroom”; “You Gonna Eat That?”), and much of the subject matter ranges from the innocent office faux pas to the full humiliation of exposed employee fraternization. In the opening tale, a disgruntled, passive-aggressive, 50-something senior buyer is caught on camera licking the car doors of her office nemesis. The next story focuses on a long-standing mailroom supervisor’s alarm at the discovery of a box of sexual accessories sent to the office by a clueless employee. Elsewhere, calling the boss’s boss a dildo has repercussions for a human resources expert, and a wrongful termination lawsuit exposes details of covert polygamy. Lawler’s tenure in human resources for a commercial bakery provided fodder for more scandalous tales. A production worker on the layer cake line faints after relating the intimate details of two co-workers’ public fondling session; a female employee gets an uncomfortable reminder about proper hygiene; and a frisky couple become caught in a walk-in freezer. Sexual innuendos are misinterpreted; calls get recorded; company cellphones harbor compromising photographs; hickeys raise eyebrows; and tempers flare. But overall, the stories amount to good, clean fun even if they are at the expense of employees who sometimes forget they’re at their place of employment. The book’s second half is decidedly a bit racier, with episodes of narcotic misappropriation, porn surfing at work, and trouble with tricky company emails. Of course, the generally provocative nature of the tales as a collection ebbs and flows, with some pieces reading more like dirty jokes than actual events. Still, the entertainment factor is consistent and the laughs should come easily for readers who fancy the awkwardness of workplace weirdness.
A collection full of office disasters, ideal for readers who need a refresher course on the consequences of impropriety.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-7340799-0-6
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Rockhampton Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Among the more amusing facts in this cultural history of the telephone is that, back in the old days, women were called upon to be telephone operators because boys, who initially had the jobs, ``were ill-suited to the delicate work of telephony. Rowdy and restless, they took pleasure in insulting callers, pulling pranks, and crossing wires.'' Filled with movie stills and posters, ads, and text from all kinds of sources, this lively documentary is less concerned with the evolving technology of the telephone than with the way it has been used and represented. Maxwell Smart's shoe phone is here, as is an excerpt from Nicholson Baker's Vox, as Stern (Best Bets, not reviewed) and Gwathmey (Wholly Cow!, not reviewed) rush happily from Alexander Graham Bell to the age of the fax-modem. Still, there's probably a good argument to be made that the pranks of punk kids were preferable to the icy contempt of voice mail.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-100086-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Alexander sets a standard of thoroughness for future works on Paton, but the treasures unearthed by his impressive research are few and far between in this tell-too-much biography. Published in 1948, Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country was a major force in drawing international attention to both literature and apartheid in South Africa. This comprehensive account covers his boyhood; his university years; his teaching career; his long tenure as principal of a reformatory; his emergence as a novelist and persecuted political figure; and his second marriage and later life. Alexander (English/Univ. of New South Wales) knew Paton and had the cooperation of his widow and two sons. His exclusive access to intimate diaries and correspondence allows him to fill out and correct Paton's autobiographies and various memoirs of him by friends and family. He counters Paton's published assertions that he was a lenient teacher by presenting the future novelist as a despised schoolmaster whose students went so far as to cheer wildly when he was nearly blinded by a chemistry demonstration gone awry. Alexander also covers Paton's extramarital affairs, of which he had at least two, and his first, sexually unfulfilling marriage to a widow who wore the wedding band from her first marriage. Since Paton did not write Cry, the Beloved Country until he was in his 40s, much of the story centers on the novelist's frustrated political ambitions. After becoming a celebrated author, much of his political work was organizational and not really the stuff of exciting storytelling. Alexander tries to show Paton as a man who cared most about serving others, but the dominant narrative thread portrays a self-assuming, sometimes calculating man. Paton achieved the rare feat of writing a novel that perceptively changed the way people looked at part of the world. His own story, however, turns out to be mundane. (8 pages b&w photos)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-811237-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
