Company (Hardcover)
by Max Barry
Doubleday, February 2006
338 Pages

It’s Monday. It’s the start of another work week. For most people there are five days to go until the weekend when we can forget about punching the time clock and working for “the man”. Don’t fret though, I have a book that changed the way I viewed work place monotony that I recently re-read, and I must share it with you.

First, some backstory. A few years ago I was working at a big corporate bank. For the sake of avoiding slanderous lawsuits I will refer to this big corporate bank as BIG BANK. I was working in the credit card phone customer service taking incoming calls and hearing people complain about their APR or how they maxed out their card or how they need an increase in their credit line so they could buy a Playstation 3. I did this for eight hours a day, five days a week. I felt as if I was shackled to my desk by the cord of the telephone headset I had to wear. Then along came Max Barry’s Company.

In Company, the fictional company of Zephyr Holdings has just hired Jones as a Sales Representative. The company has had a hiring freeze in effect. To get around the freeze Jones is hired and categorized as paper for the copying machine. Once he settles in he goes around asking questions like “What do we do here?” and “Who are our customers?” and quickly discovers that nobody knows the answers. Possibly worse, nobody cares. His co-workers accuse him of rocking the boat and that the only reason he’s asking such questions is because he’s new. Things don’t add up and as Jones investigates Zephyr Holdings, he discovers the true purpose behind the company’s insane business decisions. Insane business decisions like having the receptionist on the first floor tell a majority of the company that they’ve been laid off or why the buttons on the elevator are upside with the ground floor being level 30 and the top floor level 1.

What I love most about Company is the way Max Barry is able to explain the logic behind the company’s thought process. The reader is suppose to relate to Jones and agree with him that the company is making some real bad decisions and their problems could easily be solved if they used some common sense.

Anyway, back to my job at BIG BANK. I was reading this book and I started to notice some parallels between BIG BANK and Zephyr Holdings. It was then I realized that my time at BIG BANK was over and I put in my two weeks notice.

I highly recommend this book in general and especially to anybody who is disgruntled at their job.

Note: He did a reading at Google which is worth checking out.