Monkey business

Do you know a boss who struts around the office, preening himself and puffing out his chest, showing off a splash of colour – perhaps a red tie? According to a study of male managers, he is behaving like much of the animal kingdom, particularly monkeys and chimpanzees. --The Independent

(From Jenny)

A Sentence From the Master

The nearly universal carpeting of offices must have come about in my lifetime, judging from black-and-white movies and Hopper paintings: since the pervasion of carpeting, all you hear when people walk by are their own noises–the flap of their raincoat, the jingle of their change, the squeak of their shoes, the efficient little sniffs they make to signal to us and to themselves that they are busy and walking somewhere for a very good reason, as well as the almost sonic whoosh of receptionists' staggering and misguided perfumes, and the covert chokings and showings of tongues and placing of braceleted hands to windpipes that more tastefully scented secretaries exchange in their wake. —Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine

I'm in prison most of the day

Another one for the PD soundtrack: Lou Reed, "Don't Talk to Me About Work," at Moistworks.

(Actually, all of these would be appropriate...)

Cash crop

Overheard in the elevator.

Know what I'm saying?

On BoingBoing, Douglas Rushkoff had this to say about Personal Days:

Personal Days, by Ed Park, is a post-Dilbert, post-Microserfs look at office culture. It's like the show The Office, except populated by people who, for the most part, understand what is happening to them. What I like best about the book is Ed Park's use of cliché phrases. You know how that first song on Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom album (Beyond Belief) strings together known phrases into something entirely bigger? Or the way Delmore Schwartz would italicize a phrase as if to show it was a saying instead of just words? Know what I'm saying? Park does this throughout his text, creating a gentle, phantom hypertext that required no further explanation. And this black comedy about downsizing brings an almost Beckett-like sense of reduction to the dwindling office.

"Tracking Down First Fiction"

Personal Days has been named one of last season's "top first novels" by Library Journal.

Headquarters of What?!

Today's Life's Work by Lisa Belkin, "Talking Politics in the Office," reads like it was written for The Hometown Shopper. I hope I am not giving away too much, but it was hard to know where to stop. Some gems:

AT the Livonia, Mich., headquarters of Fathead, which produces life-size wall graphics of athletes, two new figures stand on opposite ends of an office hallway — a likeness of John McCain, and another of Barack Obama, each 6 feet 5 inches tall. They are conversation pieces, to say the least.

On the Manhattan desk of Amara S. Birman, an account executive at Dukas Public Relations, sits a Beanie Baby with a G.O.P. emblem on its tummy — an invitation to anyone who wants to talk politics.

You’ve heard that rule about never discussing politics at work? That’s so last election.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some silent types out there. Joni Daniels is one. A business consultant and meeting organizer in Manhattan, she has lots of opinions, but she keeps her political ones to herself.

Rachel Kempster used to feel that way, too — at least in the old days, which ended for her a few weeks ago. During the primaries, she says, she was “irked” by all the political chatter at DK Publishing in Manhattan, where she is a book publicist.

Is all this political talk in the office a boon for the democratic process or a tyranny of the vocal over the taciturn? Depends, sometimes literally, where you sit.

...try to find common ground.