been reading: Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Freaking loved this book. It was perhaps enhanced by the fact that I read it during an annoying office move at work. Most of the people in one office building switched places with most of the people in our other office building, a move which solved some problems and created just as many new ones. I actually think it was a good "big-picture" idea, but it was so poorly planned and executed that we lost at least a month of productivity because people became utterly preoccupied with this move. Partly, this is because it was dragged out over 9 months. If I had conceived a child on the day the move was announced I would have given birth before switching offices, I'm just saying. And the thing is, people cannot handle "imminent" change that looms for month after month, and so it became a major distraction. So that was part of the problem.

And it didn't help that people got bent out of shape over stupid things. For example, DESKS. Holy hell, people care about their desks. I had no idea. Several of my co-workers pitched a fit over the thought of a different desk. These people were (begrudgingly) okay with a new office, and even tolerated the fact that they'd have different officemates. But a different desk?! No chance in hell. Because it's an L and not a U shape....because it doesn't have a file drawer....because it's made of oak and not cherry. Good lord, it's a DESK, people! Maybe I'm the strange one, because I was like, "Um, I just need a flat plane, preferably with four legs....and maybe a drawer, if it's no trouble?" Now my chair, on the other hand....

Then We Came to the End was the perfect antidote to all this absurdity. It was almost as if Joshua Ferris were one of my co-workers:

How we hated our coffee mugs! our mouse pads, our desk clocks, our daily calendars, the contents of our desk drawers. Even the photos of our loved ones taped to our computer monitors for uplift and support turned into cloying reminders of time served. But when we got a new office, a bigger office, and we brought everything with us into the new office, how we loved everything all over again, and thought hard about where to place things, and looked with satisfaction at the end of the day at how well our old things looked in this new, improved, important space. There was no doubt in our minds just then that we had made all the right decisions, whereas most days we were men and women of two minds. Everywhere you looked, in the hallways and bathrooms, the coffee bar and cafeteria, the lobbies and print stations, there we were with our two minds.

There seemed to be only one electric pencil sharpener in the whole damn place. (7)

It's eerie how in tune this book is with the workings of work. Because I swear, hand to God, that on our first day in our new office, my officemates and I were consumed with three things: arranging our office, admiring how we'd arranged our office, and searching for the goddamn electric pencil sharpener. And the thing is? We don't even use pencils.

Even if you aren't suffering your own workplace dysfunction, you will relate to this novel if you have ever worked behind a desk or sat in a meeting or read Dilbert. The book is written in the first-person plural, which I imagine is hella-hard to do, but was extremely effective in creating the group mentality of a workplace. In this case, the workplace is an advertising agency. There are massive layoffs happening, which creates among the staff both a desire to protect oneself and the need to cling more tightly to each other, since no one else truly understands what they're going through.

So many pages I dog-eared because they contain passages that made me say, "Yes! That's it! That's exactly it!" What is brilliant about this book, though, is that not only does Ferris provide amusingly accurate depictions of office life, but at the same time he is examining our interactions and psyches and vulnerabilities. His novel is hilarious while also driving to the heart of what it means to be human. This is a compelling, intelligent, impeccably-written book that is also a fucking blast to read.