This intellectually funny, and easy to relate to, fictional work with dramatic undertones is a first-person story that centers around the humorously skeptical recent college graduate, Sean Bronson, as he lands his first “real” job and learns to navigate the treacherous waters of corporate America – beginning to realize that incompetence and underhandedness abound in every corner and that office life can often be anything but professional. The story is set in the headquarters of a multi-billion dollar home furnishing company located in the modern day suburban landscape of Long Island, New York.
The story begins as the sarcastically precocious, yet introspective, Sean is waiting his last table at a depressing, dream-graveyard type of a restaurant and decides that he needs to move out of his parent’s house and in order to do that he needs to search for a career. We follow him as he engages himself in his first career oriented interview with the profit-hungry home retail giant known as “Cool Collectibles.” We meet a wide cast of characters in the workplace that show Sean that people who have a profession are not always behaviorally professional. We also encounter Karen and Bessie, two love interests of Sean’s who each represent, in different ways, the hardships of establishing that highly coveted ideal of a work-life balance. The tone of the book starts off as being humorous but then transitions into a more grave matters such as workplace romances (and failures) as well as employee resignations and tumultuous performance reviews. His dream of moving into a place of his own is also stymied when he quickly realizes that “rookie-pay” does not go very far in New York.
This book artfully infuses comedy and interpersonal drama into the highly relatable “chore” of embarking on a new career.
A must-read for anyone who works in an office, or is planning to, as it will make you feel much better about your life.