Work Got You Down? Revolt! - Tips from Max Barry's Company

Work can be a very confusing place. It can be stressful. Far too often, it's a lot of both. Anyone who's never done it will think there couldn't be an easier job than sitting at a desk in a big corporation plugging away at the computer all day. You, me, and Max Barry all know differently.

In his newest book, Company, Max Barry sheds some light on the policies and practices of the modern corporate world. This book will make you laugh, it might make you cry, and if you're lucky, it may just inspire you towards a whole new view of your work life.

Let me say from the start that Company is a novel. Its characters, events, localities and businesses are fictional. But as far as I'm concerned, they're about as unrealistic as "historical fiction." By that, I mean, it really sounds like this could've happened or could be happening now.

Max Barry is a great author and this is his third book. He's written Syrup (which I've not read) and Jennifer Government (which I have read and happens to be one of the best pieces of dystopian literature I've read since George Orwell and the best, if only, corporate satire I'd read up until Company).

His stories move at a quick pace; he doesn't bog you down in too many environmental or psychological descriptions. Regardless, both his environments and his characters are still incredibly vivid, maybe just because you could swear you know someone just like each of his characters. He captures their speech and mannerisms excellently. And he even manages to achieve something just short of epic before the end of each of his two books that I've read.

For a movie generation, Max Barry is our author and his books are just begging to be translated to the big screen. All of this is to say that regardless of how you feel about politics, corporate life or management policies, Company, and his other books will draw you in and keep you in until you finish. You almost wish it wasn't so exciting so you'd have a little more time to savor the climax.

At its core, Company deals with inexplicable corporate policies, idiots in the workplace and abusive management decisions that simply make you shrink into your khaki pants and button-up shirt as your self-esteem drastically drops. It berates all these aspects of corporate life, occasionally wonders if it should defend them and finally decides the whole system is in dire need of upheaval. It even says that upheaval can be accomplished by you, the apathetic, nerdy, or out-of-shape white-collar worker - a revolt!

I'll do my best to not give away the story or even the main characters, since it's partly their character itself which brings Company so much charm. Suffice it to say the story revolves around a new employee freshly thrust into a large corporation and details his journey to understand just what is going on, what their company does and eventually, if the way it does it is even right. Take my word for it that this one-sentence description may not sound so exciting only because the major plot twists are so incredible and at times dastardly that I'd rather have you, the potential reader, be surprised by them yourself.

Aside from Company's story-telling aspects as a novel, you can really learn a lot about your own participation in corporate life through its many hilarious and painfully accurate anecdotes. Throughout the pages of the book, sometimes connected to the main character's story but often just to explain the nonsense of a big company, are scattered short stories and descriptions about the way certain policies or people have come to be.

Have you noticed someone you work with who keeps getting promoted despite all lack of business, management, and people skills? Why are IT people never understood? How in the world do they decide who gets which parking space? Do company reorganizations ever accomplish anything but a few lay-offs and new hires? How can one department always survive lay-offs when they never do any real work? Do you think upper management even knows you're a person and not a number?

Max Barry's Company explores all these questions and then some through depressingly honest insights into what makes modern corporations tick and what drives their management policies. You're probably far too familiar with many stories and you'll be as likely to groan as to laugh at some of it. Several of the ideas presented as extreme hypotheses for more efficient management techniques are unfortunate realities in many of today's workplaces. Yet, Max Barry manages to interject humor into every one of these situations and you get the feeling that even if you can't change it, you can laugh at it.

But that's not the end of the story. Coursing throughout the book is the idea that a company's employees are worth more than their output, their efficiency, or their cost-cutting measures. Max Barry's statement is "you're worth more than this" if it's nothing else. This may sound like idealism and even by the end you're never quite sure if it's anything more. But it doesn't matter. Your co-workers feel the same as you.

If the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness promised to you by the Constitution aren't happening in your workplace, then it's as much tyranny as when America was an over-taxed colony of the British Empire. You and your co-workers are in it together and you can win it together. If work has you down and is keeping you down, there may be only one solution left: revolt!

Max Barry's Company is a wild ride through corporate life spanning break-room donut thefts to massive managerial conspiracies. Every page is worth the read.