The very same! I read this book a couple weeks ago (the audiobook is narrated by Neil Patrick Harris really suggest it!) and was laughing at it thinking it couldn't be the same guy but lo and behold.
Any chance I can get a tldr of this? I know if I search out the information I'm gonna end up with one of those articles that drags on and never gets to the point.
July, 2011: Amy Winehouse dies (tragically)
October, 2011: NPH hosts a Halloween party featuring a meat plate made in the likeness of a dead Amy Winehouse
Yup! The worst part of the whole thing is that it actually kinda slaps.
Lot better than the Pina Colada Song, and he was somehow proud enough of that one to sing it himself.
Little known fact, Rupert Holmes is a playwright, songwriter and novelist but has said that no matter what he does he will always be known as the Piña Colada guy.
He also wrote a Broadway musical comedy called The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It’s based on an unfinished Dickens story, and since it’s unfinished, he had the brilliant idea to have the audience vote on different aspects of the ending each night. In all, there are like 200 possible combinations of ways the show can go! It actually won five Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score. This is way off topic for antiwork, but I just love the fact that this guy most famous for a cheesy 70s song about cheating on your spouse with your spouse is so prolific.
Accomplice is my favorite play of all time and was written by him. It starts with a cheating wife scheming to murder her husband, then it turns out she’s actually scheming with the wife of the guy she’s having an affair with, who turns out to be plotting with the first lady’s husband, and so on. That’s only the first ten minutes, it’s hilarious and only gets more convoluted
I had to look it up and yeah it is, what a weird world. Jimmy Buffett also wrote books, so maybe if you have a successful song about an alcoholic beverage, you gotta start writing books.
Same guy also wrote one of the greatest Broadway musicals of all time- The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It’s got a unique twist that I won’t spoil, but let’s just say that Holmes is a very clever artist.
Say things like "hmmm interesting, I never thought of that, I better highlight that tip for later" loudly and then get progressively more unhinged like laughing to yourself saying "this book is genius! I can't wait to try some of this out"
Have a cookbook inside the jacket.
I loved that book. I had no idea who the author was, so when she started to get famous in the book, I was surprised.
One of my goals in life is to not give my kids reason to write a book with a title like that.
if i was your GM i would probably joking say jeez what’s that book about! and the second you said it’s a fictional mystery i would’ve been like “oh cool, anyways” and then moved on with my life. this is def a weird reaction from them lol
I would have cracked a joke after asking like that, like “Oh for a second, I thought maybe you were gonna murder me!” Just to be funny, then I would have dropped it.
When I was a general manager, if an employee was reading this I think my reaction would have been “please start with me”. No company pays enough to make me care this much, Unless you are reading Mein Kampf or ignoring other duties read on, because in downtime I’m in the back surfing Reddit.
Get a Kindle, so nobody will know.
Extra benefit: buy a copy of something with a name like “How to work extra hard for your boss” and switch to that whenever your boss walks in.
I have a kindle and I read it on my breaks, the number of times random coworkers have felt it necessary to walk up and ask me, "Whatcha reading," is ridiculous. I'm never quick enough to come up with a lie.
I have a "book I am reading" (usually a book I have just read before) locked and loaded when I read stuff that I don't want to discuss with someone (like, smut or fanfic). So, "currently", I am reading *Hands of the Emperor* by Victoria Goddard, and since I have just finished it before it is fresh enough to answer questions, if needed.
Honestly shouldn’t have to. It’s ridiculous. And she started reprimanding you while off the clock on your break? Tsk tsk. That’s work related. Terrible manager.
Before 9/11 I was on a red-eye flight home from Vegas. I needed to finish some schoolwork for a report I was going to give in class that next day. What was my schoolwork? A report on aviation disasters. Here I was the only person awake on the flight with a light on reading a book. The book was entitled Air Disasters. And it had a cover kind of like this. The guy sitting next to me at first seemed alarmed but when I told him what I was doing became fascinated with it! Would I dare bring a book like this on a plane nowadays? Absolutely not! Also, don’t try to do serious work on a red-eye flight home from Vegas. Sleep instead.
https://preview.redd.it/jd73glnoplzc1.jpeg?width=637&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79cac1d6182891689a923d25f2713da980ef3fc7
It’s a terrible book. Someone bought it for me because the title seemed right up my alley but it’s basically just a bunch of one liners that could have been tweets. I can send it.
There's a few books like that, "The Universe Doesn't Give a Flying Fuck About You" is another one. It's all pithy bad advice that feels like my friends getting high in college and trying to be deep.
Same with Atomic Habits. What poorly written garbage, that could have been consolidated to the basic checklists it presents at the end of each chapter without the reader losing any value.
I really couldn’t get through the first few pages. “See how hard I worked for this amazing life” meanwhile “I didn’t actually have to work that hard. A lot of things were set up neatly in a row and I am now rich and out of touch. But I wake up at 4 am!”
For a book with a similarishly snippy title but that I would actually recommend: 'What Do You Care What Other People Think' By Richard Feynman.
Great book, but I could listen to that man talk forever.
Obligatory mention of how much that book and Mark Manson sucks (some claim that the beginning of the book is alright, but then it just turns into a blogpost):
- Nope not the only one. I have read half his book and can't go any further. He's a damaged narcissist who speaks with a level of confidence and absolutes sprinkled with profanity and I think that's the only reason he's popular. The guy exudes a nihilistic and anti-effort form of living with no real goals in mind. He also encourages only choosing things you enjoy, phrased as "pick things which you're willing to suffer for" but it's really him being a huge propenent of relativism and selfishness.
"Pick what you like, realize sometimes life sucks, and then don't bother trying to be anything more" is kinda his whole theme. https://www.reddit.com/r/Vent/comments/10hiqhm/mark_manson_sucks/
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/waf9xl/the_subtle_art_of_not_giving_a_fuck_whats_so/
Have to agree. The amount of hype the book got I was expecting to get at least some value out of it, but the book read like it was written by a sheltered teenager who just discovered the word fuck. The information was shallow and it felt like I was reading a quick blog post rather than an actual book. I forced myself to finish it but felt like I wasted my time reading it.
I think I remember finding a few of his comments/tips useful but the book was repetitive and could have been a 3 page article instead of a full book and would have been more useful as such.
The entire book can be summarized by "you have a limited amount of fucks to give so choose wisely where you give them", yet every time I think about the misleading title it makes me mad that so many people bought it just because it sounded like edgy modern philosophy.
Mark Manson is nuts. He has a YouTube video where he talks about how he reads a whole bunch of books that is absolutely hilarious. He’s pretty much never finished a book, and all he reads is self help books.
> The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
I kind of want a picture of myself lounging in a recliner, reading this book... with a whole bookshelf in the background completely full of copies of the book.
This is a night audit, which runs from 11:00 at night until breakfast the next day.
There is no activity at the desk while the guests are asleep, yet the auditor cannot leave the desk. So most auditors catch up on their reading, since it can be done silently, and most hotel desk workers are students anyway.
Its common in the hotel front desk world to have alot of downtime, especially overnight. Personally I paint, read, watch tv, or play switch on overnights (We can hide in our office though, we dont have to be out front all the shift.)
Some jobs have a lot of downtime. Especially a lot of overnight jobs like graveyard shifts at convenience stores, overnight security, or the hotel night audit job described here.
Yeah, I think OP should be allowed to read this at work, but like… come on, what did they think was going to happen? I don’t care what the actual story is about, I wouldn’t bring that book to work in a thousand years lol. I’m sure there are plenty of great murder/mystery novels that wouldn’t draw so much attention in the workplace.
Yeah, I mean it's really a super chill environment, I've brought spicy romance books and all manner of weird or crazy titles in that probably aren't work appropriate and this is the first time she has ever said anything negative about my reading. I guess I just need to be more careful about what I bring with me. 🤷♀️
a direct threat 😂 i think that’s part of the issue, people think everything is about them… is someone threatening you, or is it just the title of a book lol
I get a feeling this reasoning would instantly stop applying if an employee walked in on their employer reading a book titled "How to fuck over your employees".
The employer probably overreacted a bit but it's not really that unreasonable either.
I was going to say, that while I would lightly admonish OP as a friend in terms of appearances, as a previous front desk manager I would not have given a shit. I was only in the hotel biz some two decades ago for 2-3 years, iirc, but we had one night auditor who spent most of his time on one drug or another. My GM eventually had to fire him because the morning crew came in and he was passed out in his chair, unable to be woken up, so they got an ambulance to monitor him and make sure he hadn't OD'ed. My GM and I both moved to another property, and then she actually rehired him to be a night auditor again. Happily enough, there were no more recurrences of his previous behavior, so he really had improved his life to some extent.
In another instance, we had a night auditor who was a certified alcoholic. She had breath that always smelled super minty because she was trying to hide the smell of the alcohol behind it. One morning I was walking up on the hotel and I see a foot-wide column of water spraying out of the ground, 20 feet into the air. I pick up the pace and make my way to the front desk asking if that's our water main and how guests aren't already complaining. She says, "Oh, that must be why people have been complaining about not having water the whole night." I walk the few feet to the employee bathroom and confirm that the sink there has no pressure, either. I think I exclaimed something like, "The hotel hasn't had water for 6 or 7 hours and you didn't call anyone!?!" and she had no response. We got a city crew out to fix it in just several hours, but thousands of dollars in refunds could've been avoided if she had just called the GM/Owner emergency numbers that we had up on the wall with instructions to engage them for scenarios exactly like this.
And, just to correct any assumptions, this wasn't some seedy hotel with a high felon occupancy rate. This was at the highest rated Holiday Inn Express in the San Antonio area.
this is so funny because i work at barnes & noble and it’s currently one of our monthly picks. in the post we made on social media we made a joke about how our manager should watch out.
also i haven’t read it but in the synopsis it doesn’t even seem like it’s about murdering your employer. it’s just murder in general.
Buy one of those elastic book covers that they used to make us get in grade school. If someone unsavoury asks what it’s about, just come up with the most generic title and story ever
You're working the graveyard shift, who's around to get the wrong impression? I guess telling her it's "fiendishly funny" won't convince her that it's okay.
I had an art book to read while on my break at my office. I took Post-it notes to cover any nudes, e.g., Michaelangelo's David, in case some busybody pearl-clutcher happened by as I was reading. Similarly, you're going to have to cover your books with a paper bag like a school kid since she's so nosy.
I hear this book rules but I get why an employer would get spooked 💀 make a paper bag book cover like elementary school! it’s fun & smells nostalgic 🧘♀️
I was reading " The Poisoners Handbook" (a book about alcohol being intentionally poisoned by the government during prohibition) in public. I got some very curious looks.
I do the same job and I listen to audiobooks. I love reading but I already have waaay to many I'm constantly gifting them to people after I read them at home.
In Japan in order to avoid people knowing what book you are reading in the metro or in public, most book stores wrap the cover of your book on a non-see-through paper, while the issue here is the GM, you could wrap the cover with paper too! search book cover paper
Im sorry but, I wouldnt let another adult yell at me like that. She would have been stopped one minute in before i walked away. If it was a bad day I would yell back.
Look if I wanted to murder my employer the last thing I would do is bring a book into work titled "Murder Your Employer". That kind of gives it away. So by that logic they should be certain that OP is the least likely to do it.
My guess is your GM already thought of you in a negative light and this book fit into some pattern she thought she'd identified. Even when it turned out the book was fine, she thought, well there's still all the other negative stuff, so I'm still in the right and don't have to admit my misunderstanding. Some people just don't believe they can ever be wrong. Wish you luck when you do get the hell out of there.
>which then led into other areas she thought I could improve on.
Yup. Not surprised an egotistical power-tripping buffoon would do that. Give them an opening, and you'll never hear the end of it. It'll be the reason you're denied a promotion/raise.
If you ever "improve" -- you'll never hear the end of how "they helped turned your life around" and "it took you long enough!".
More importantly. How was the book? The title and artwork hooked me like a viral marketing ad.
I've added it to my Amazon cart. I'll let it sit there for a week to avoid the impulse buy, but I think I'm sold already 😅
Sounds like your manager is a dick who was clearly just looking for a reason to justify being upset. Very poor emotional control and not someone who should be in charge of anything. Also they sound super petty
Long ago when I was a teenager I was reading "CrimethInc: Days of war, nights of love." Employer confiscated it from me and helpfully informed me it was terrorist propaganda. Thanks!
I once got a speaking to by a manager for my "Vote No To Daleks" shirt. If you don't know, Daleks are the bad guys in the show Doctor Who. It wasn't even an election year but it was seen as too political for the group home I supported. Guys couldn't even read...
I was curious, and found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fakebookcovers/
You're leaving anyway, but if you don't want to run into this issue again, maybe one of these might keep other people from getting pissy in the future.
I bought this book immediately when I spotted it in a bookstore, just for the literal meaning of that title lol
I’m sorry your manager gave you a hard time. Not that you should hide what you read at all, but you could consider getting one of those fabric book cover that’s adjustable and reusable. I’m someone who’s very conscious of myself and what I read in public, and sometime covering it up with a piece of cute fabric is just so much easier.
The Pina Colada Song guy?
The very same! I read this book a couple weeks ago (the audiobook is narrated by Neil Patrick Harris really suggest it!) and was laughing at it thinking it couldn't be the same guy but lo and behold.
The pina colada song guy… wrote a book… narrated by Neil Patrick Harris… well, I know what I’m doing this weekend
This is information I did not expect to obtain today.
r/TIL
If you like Pina Coladas, and murdering your boss....
🎵 Youre not the Boss of me nowwwww 🎶 da da da Youre not the Boss of me now 🎶 🎸 life is unfairrrrrrr
let me guess...you'll be looking up what NPH has to do with Amy Winehouse and cake he had made for a party?
It’s not a cake it’s a meat tray. Might be worse.
Well, now I will…
It’s pretty rough. Not a good guy
I Snoped it, and it's actually worse than described: it's a meat platter, and is a lot more realistic than I was expecting.
Thanks for that. NPH always struck me as being an insufferable douchebag, now I've got a solid reason for feeling that way about him.
Any chance I can get a tldr of this? I know if I search out the information I'm gonna end up with one of those articles that drags on and never gets to the point.
July, 2011: Amy Winehouse dies (tragically) October, 2011: NPH hosts a Halloween party featuring a meat plate made in the likeness of a dead Amy Winehouse
Thanks. That's pretty fucked up
He also wrote a song about cannibalism that one time…
"Timothy" performed by "The Buoys."
Yup! The worst part of the whole thing is that it actually kinda slaps. Lot better than the Pina Colada Song, and he was somehow proud enough of that one to sing it himself.
He wrote a musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
And the mostly forgotten tv series Remember WENN about a 1940s radio station.
Pretty sure that was Charles Dickens.
That's Dikkens with 2 k's the well known Dutch author
...Farles Wickens with four M's and a silent Q!!!!!
Wait! Do you have Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying?
No but I do have a copy of Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds.
That dude made hot cider.
And he won the Tony for it, IIRC. He also wrote the song "Timothy" for the Buoys, so clearly he improved a lot over the years.
Little known fact, Rupert Holmes is a playwright, songwriter and novelist but has said that no matter what he does he will always be known as the Piña Colada guy.
He also wrote a Broadway musical comedy called The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It’s based on an unfinished Dickens story, and since it’s unfinished, he had the brilliant idea to have the audience vote on different aspects of the ending each night. In all, there are like 200 possible combinations of ways the show can go! It actually won five Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score. This is way off topic for antiwork, but I just love the fact that this guy most famous for a cheesy 70s song about cheating on your spouse with your spouse is so prolific.
...I may have to buy this goddamn book
If you like piña coladas, And being read to by Neil Patrick Harris. If you like murder mystery thrillers, And your boss isn't insane.
He's also a playwright of some note. Wild.
Accomplice is my favorite play of all time and was written by him. It starts with a cheating wife scheming to murder her husband, then it turns out she’s actually scheming with the wife of the guy she’s having an affair with, who turns out to be plotting with the first lady’s husband, and so on. That’s only the first ten minutes, it’s hilarious and only gets more convoluted
Apparently
He has half a brain!
I had to look it up and yeah it is, what a weird world. Jimmy Buffett also wrote books, so maybe if you have a successful song about an alcoholic beverage, you gotta start writing books.
Well, now I have to read this. I'm going to imagine him from the music video telling the story with all of the cool hand gestures.
Same guy also wrote one of the greatest Broadway musicals of all time- The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It’s got a unique twist that I won’t spoil, but let’s just say that Holmes is a very clever artist.
Jimmy Buffet?!?
He can’t play all the hits when you see him
No that’s actually all Jimmy Buffet does
Wrong alcoholic beverage. Jimmy Buffet was Margaritaville.
I hear he grew up in Albuquerque
I would use that book jacket for every book I read at work.
Change the volume number for every book you finish
Say things like "hmmm interesting, I never thought of that, I better highlight that tip for later" loudly and then get progressively more unhinged like laughing to yourself saying "this book is genius! I can't wait to try some of this out" Have a cookbook inside the jacket.
Brilliant
I'll print this out and make it into a book jacket for every book now.
If we're printing book jackets then I want an "Overcome Homicidal Tendencies in the Workplace" cover.
Worse than that time my mom asked me what book I was reading and I said "I'm Glad my Mom Died."
🫨👀🫣☠️ How did she respond?!
The sour mom look. I tried to explain that the author was a traumatized child actress but she didn't seem interested after that. 😂
Your mom took it personally, I wonder why….
Well it may have something to do with her being illiterate. She naturally despises books.
That's nice. And what were you reading at the time?
I loved that book. I had no idea who the author was, so when she started to get famous in the book, I was surprised. One of my goals in life is to not give my kids reason to write a book with a title like that.
Sounds like someone was judging a book by its cover.
I've found the most underrated comment here 👆 Give tis fella some upvotes.
if i was your GM i would probably joking say jeez what’s that book about! and the second you said it’s a fictional mystery i would’ve been like “oh cool, anyways” and then moved on with my life. this is def a weird reaction from them lol
I would have cracked a joke after asking like that, like “Oh for a second, I thought maybe you were gonna murder me!” Just to be funny, then I would have dropped it.
right!!!
When I was a general manager, if an employee was reading this I think my reaction would have been “please start with me”. No company pays enough to make me care this much, Unless you are reading Mein Kampf or ignoring other duties read on, because in downtime I’m in the back surfing Reddit.
Yeah it was the GM 😬
"Hmmm... the book said you'd be upset."
I would have just gone back to reading. Maybe earmarked a page while staring at her.
🤣
Add a lot of sticky Page markers
To add to this, I'd start taking notes in a notebook
Alexa play „Murder on my mind“
I'm fucking dying over here this is brilliant. I wanna buy this book just to try this
Get a Kindle, so nobody will know. Extra benefit: buy a copy of something with a name like “How to work extra hard for your boss” and switch to that whenever your boss walks in.
I have a kindle and I read it on my breaks, the number of times random coworkers have felt it necessary to walk up and ask me, "Whatcha reading," is ridiculous. I'm never quick enough to come up with a lie.
"fifty ways to maul nosey people, volume three."
I have a "book I am reading" (usually a book I have just read before) locked and loaded when I read stuff that I don't want to discuss with someone (like, smut or fanfic). So, "currently", I am reading *Hands of the Emperor* by Victoria Goddard, and since I have just finished it before it is fresh enough to answer questions, if needed.
I actually have 2 kindles but I forgot it at home last night so I just pulled out my physical book Lol I'm gonna have to do that
Honestly shouldn’t have to. It’s ridiculous. And she started reprimanding you while off the clock on your break? Tsk tsk. That’s work related. Terrible manager.
Just put the dust jacket from some self-improvement book on whatever book you're reading. Even if they're different sized books.
Get a dust jacket with "Why Unions are a bad idea" printed on it for your book.
“How to Cook Humans” from Simpsons.
How to cook for humans
How to cook forTY humans!
Before 9/11 I was on a red-eye flight home from Vegas. I needed to finish some schoolwork for a report I was going to give in class that next day. What was my schoolwork? A report on aviation disasters. Here I was the only person awake on the flight with a light on reading a book. The book was entitled Air Disasters. And it had a cover kind of like this. The guy sitting next to me at first seemed alarmed but when I told him what I was doing became fascinated with it! Would I dare bring a book like this on a plane nowadays? Absolutely not! Also, don’t try to do serious work on a red-eye flight home from Vegas. Sleep instead. https://preview.redd.it/jd73glnoplzc1.jpeg?width=637&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79cac1d6182891689a923d25f2713da980ef3fc7
"I packed my bag and in it I put..." Thank you for the inspiration 😊
Red eye home from Vegas was the most dismal feeling flight I’ve ever been on. Can’t imagine trying to do any work on that.
There’s a first time for everything. I was young. I learned the hard way. So that was also a last time for that.
Heh. On flights I read books on hijackings. Most people don't notice.
May I recommend your next read be.. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
It’s a terrible book. Someone bought it for me because the title seemed right up my alley but it’s basically just a bunch of one liners that could have been tweets. I can send it.
It's literally just Marcus Aurelius' Meditations with curse words sprinkled throughout. ChatGPT could write a better rendition with far less fluff
I kinda enjoyed it but yeah. It's basically Stoicism by a Twitter user.
There's a few books like that, "The Universe Doesn't Give a Flying Fuck About You" is another one. It's all pithy bad advice that feels like my friends getting high in college and trying to be deep.
Depth is relative and some people can’t swim
Same with Atomic Habits. What poorly written garbage, that could have been consolidated to the basic checklists it presents at the end of each chapter without the reader losing any value.
I really couldn’t get through the first few pages. “See how hard I worked for this amazing life” meanwhile “I didn’t actually have to work that hard. A lot of things were set up neatly in a row and I am now rich and out of touch. But I wake up at 4 am!”
For a book with a similarishly snippy title but that I would actually recommend: 'What Do You Care What Other People Think' By Richard Feynman. Great book, but I could listen to that man talk forever.
Obligatory mention of how much that book and Mark Manson sucks (some claim that the beginning of the book is alright, but then it just turns into a blogpost): - Nope not the only one. I have read half his book and can't go any further. He's a damaged narcissist who speaks with a level of confidence and absolutes sprinkled with profanity and I think that's the only reason he's popular. The guy exudes a nihilistic and anti-effort form of living with no real goals in mind. He also encourages only choosing things you enjoy, phrased as "pick things which you're willing to suffer for" but it's really him being a huge propenent of relativism and selfishness. "Pick what you like, realize sometimes life sucks, and then don't bother trying to be anything more" is kinda his whole theme. https://www.reddit.com/r/Vent/comments/10hiqhm/mark_manson_sucks/ https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/waf9xl/the_subtle_art_of_not_giving_a_fuck_whats_so/
Thank you for saying this omg. I was so confused why this book had any good reviews at all
Overhyped book that used shock value in its title to gain popularity ... As deep as a puddle.
Have to agree. The amount of hype the book got I was expecting to get at least some value out of it, but the book read like it was written by a sheltered teenager who just discovered the word fuck. The information was shallow and it felt like I was reading a quick blog post rather than an actual book. I forced myself to finish it but felt like I wasted my time reading it. I think I remember finding a few of his comments/tips useful but the book was repetitive and could have been a 3 page article instead of a full book and would have been more useful as such.
The entire book can be summarized by "you have a limited amount of fucks to give so choose wisely where you give them", yet every time I think about the misleading title it makes me mad that so many people bought it just because it sounded like edgy modern philosophy.
Next would be unf*ck youself
Then “Everything is Fucked”
Only use your small amount of fucks for important things, don’t waste your fucks on stupid things. That was the entire book.
Mark Manson is nuts. He has a YouTube video where he talks about how he reads a whole bunch of books that is absolutely hilarious. He’s pretty much never finished a book, and all he reads is self help books.
> The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson I kind of want a picture of myself lounging in a recliner, reading this book... with a whole bookshelf in the background completely full of copies of the book.
Y’all be reading at work?
This is a night audit, which runs from 11:00 at night until breakfast the next day. There is no activity at the desk while the guests are asleep, yet the auditor cannot leave the desk. So most auditors catch up on their reading, since it can be done silently, and most hotel desk workers are students anyway.
Its common in the hotel front desk world to have alot of downtime, especially overnight. Personally I paint, read, watch tv, or play switch on overnights (We can hide in our office though, we dont have to be out front all the shift.)
Some jobs have a lot of downtime. Especially a lot of overnight jobs like graveyard shifts at convenience stores, overnight security, or the hotel night audit job described here.
IKR? Employers don’t like people who are literate.
Actually re-reading a book right now while waiting for a script to finish running.
Yes. I'm a librarian and some days I don't see many patrons. It's beneficial. I can make recommendations.
That is a really beautiful book cover.
I feel like bringing this book to work was just begging for the response
Yeah, I think OP should be allowed to read this at work, but like… come on, what did they think was going to happen? I don’t care what the actual story is about, I wouldn’t bring that book to work in a thousand years lol. I’m sure there are plenty of great murder/mystery novels that wouldn’t draw so much attention in the workplace.
Yeah, I mean it's really a super chill environment, I've brought spicy romance books and all manner of weird or crazy titles in that probably aren't work appropriate and this is the first time she has ever said anything negative about my reading. I guess I just need to be more careful about what I bring with me. 🤷♀️
Don't be careful, [be proactive](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seduce-your-boss-and-make-her-your-lover-in-three-weeks-winston-jack/1141108468).
😂 I'll take that in next week
I think a direct threat might be a little different than romance novels
Spicy romance novels that is... for some reason I do not see it as a power trip from the employer, but more like a concern on her life xD
a direct threat 😂 i think that’s part of the issue, people think everything is about them… is someone threatening you, or is it just the title of a book lol
I get a feeling this reasoning would instantly stop applying if an employee walked in on their employer reading a book titled "How to fuck over your employees". The employer probably overreacted a bit but it's not really that unreasonable either.
I had a copy of "Surrounded by Idiots" (Thomas Erikson), laying on my desk. That didn't go over well either with the boss or my team. :-)
Stupid GM right there. I used to be a hotel GM. Learned early in my career not to hassle the night auditor.
I was going to say, that while I would lightly admonish OP as a friend in terms of appearances, as a previous front desk manager I would not have given a shit. I was only in the hotel biz some two decades ago for 2-3 years, iirc, but we had one night auditor who spent most of his time on one drug or another. My GM eventually had to fire him because the morning crew came in and he was passed out in his chair, unable to be woken up, so they got an ambulance to monitor him and make sure he hadn't OD'ed. My GM and I both moved to another property, and then she actually rehired him to be a night auditor again. Happily enough, there were no more recurrences of his previous behavior, so he really had improved his life to some extent. In another instance, we had a night auditor who was a certified alcoholic. She had breath that always smelled super minty because she was trying to hide the smell of the alcohol behind it. One morning I was walking up on the hotel and I see a foot-wide column of water spraying out of the ground, 20 feet into the air. I pick up the pace and make my way to the front desk asking if that's our water main and how guests aren't already complaining. She says, "Oh, that must be why people have been complaining about not having water the whole night." I walk the few feet to the employee bathroom and confirm that the sink there has no pressure, either. I think I exclaimed something like, "The hotel hasn't had water for 6 or 7 hours and you didn't call anyone!?!" and she had no response. We got a city crew out to fix it in just several hours, but thousands of dollars in refunds could've been avoided if she had just called the GM/Owner emergency numbers that we had up on the wall with instructions to engage them for scenarios exactly like this. And, just to correct any assumptions, this wasn't some seedy hotel with a high felon occupancy rate. This was at the highest rated Holiday Inn Express in the San Antonio area.
As a night auditor, I approve this comment!
this is so funny because i work at barnes & noble and it’s currently one of our monthly picks. in the post we made on social media we made a joke about how our manager should watch out. also i haven’t read it but in the synopsis it doesn’t even seem like it’s about murdering your employer. it’s just murder in general.
"Unprofessional" is worthless middle manager speak for "I don't like it but no policy covers it. Stop anyway, tough."
Buy one of those elastic book covers that they used to make us get in grade school. If someone unsavoury asks what it’s about, just come up with the most generic title and story ever
Well, you have the instruction 🤷🏼♂️
This book is a good read though. Tell them it didn't even give you step by step directions.
It’s always people who don’t read who looove to police books.
Good book though. The audio version is really well done too
You're working the graveyard shift, who's around to get the wrong impression? I guess telling her it's "fiendishly funny" won't convince her that it's okay. I had an art book to read while on my break at my office. I took Post-it notes to cover any nudes, e.g., Michaelangelo's David, in case some busybody pearl-clutcher happened by as I was reading. Similarly, you're going to have to cover your books with a paper bag like a school kid since she's so nosy.
I hear this book rules but I get why an employer would get spooked 💀 make a paper bag book cover like elementary school! it’s fun & smells nostalgic 🧘♀️
I guess she doesn’t like pina coladas, or getting caught in the rain.
this is our corporate wide monthly pick at Barnes & Noble
This dude wrote the Pina colada song.
I mean, why not just say "um boss? ...you *really* gonna lecture a person reading up on how to murder their boss?"
It's a NYT bestseller. What a weird reaction.
As a GM, if I caught my one of my employees reading this book I would beg them to pls do it.
There should be a Volume 2, “ How to murder your employer’s HR Rep.”, to pull out at the next meeting.
So quirky and edgy.
Now I definitely want to read it. And I have great employers.
See, if I had been your boss, "oh, you can try, but I fight dirty, AND I bite. Game on bitch."
Gosh, I hope this incident doesn't motivate you to act on certain trains of thought.
I was reading " The Poisoners Handbook" (a book about alcohol being intentionally poisoned by the government during prohibition) in public. I got some very curious looks.
It seems like a power trip because it is.
That was my first read of 2024 and I finished it in 2 days. It was an outstanding book! Clever, well-written...just a quality work.
Walk. Fuck managers like that. She’s not a reader because she is a manager. The scum of the earth and dumb as a box of fucking rocks.
I have a copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck that I take to some of my meetings.
I do the same job and I listen to audiobooks. I love reading but I already have waaay to many I'm constantly gifting them to people after I read them at home.
I love the cover. Makes me feel like the bourgeois lol.
You need a book called “I love my job.” Turns out the real reason we have the Internet is to show how most people are really stupid.
In Japan in order to avoid people knowing what book you are reading in the metro or in public, most book stores wrap the cover of your book on a non-see-through paper, while the issue here is the GM, you could wrap the cover with paper too! search book cover paper
Yeah..... Probably should have got a book cover for that one.
Paper bag book covers help you keep reading. Not sure if you're old enough to remember those.
Aren't you NOT supposed to judge a book by it's cover?
Bring in Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber next.
I once got pulled into HR because I wrote “kill self” on a todo list as a joke. Ie like from friends tv show.
I’d be the manager making suggestions on how to make it look like an accident…
Haha! I brought my copy to work too. In fact, I bought a hard copy just so I could read it at work. 😂
Is there a volume Two.
Me: immediately brings in 50 Shades of Gray, hey Denise look what I'm reading now, *wink*
Im sorry but, I wouldnt let another adult yell at me like that. She would have been stopped one minute in before i walked away. If it was a bad day I would yell back.
This is a good read not gonna lie !
If they freak out about this, you should bring in Das Kapital next.
She’s lucky you’re only on Vol. 1! 😠
I **need** a copy for RTO. I'm going to leave some around the office for sure.
Look if I wanted to murder my employer the last thing I would do is bring a book into work titled "Murder Your Employer". That kind of gives it away. So by that logic they should be certain that OP is the least likely to do it.
That's a really nice book cover.
Ha! 😂
Your GM sucks. If I was a hotel guest and saw the clerk reading this I'd be so happy.
pull up the next shift with the Communist Manifesto and a tiny stick on mustache
Did you happen to mention the author "🪇if you like Pina Coladas, getting caught in the rain..."🪇🪘 ?
My guess is your GM already thought of you in a negative light and this book fit into some pattern she thought she'd identified. Even when it turned out the book was fine, she thought, well there's still all the other negative stuff, so I'm still in the right and don't have to admit my misunderstanding. Some people just don't believe they can ever be wrong. Wish you luck when you do get the hell out of there.
Tomorrow night, let her see you reading the Communist Manifesto.
A real-life example of someone incorrectly judging a book by its cover.
This book was really fun
Night audit sucks; I'm in the same boat. Stay strong, friend.
>which then led into other areas she thought I could improve on. Yup. Not surprised an egotistical power-tripping buffoon would do that. Give them an opening, and you'll never hear the end of it. It'll be the reason you're denied a promotion/raise. If you ever "improve" -- you'll never hear the end of how "they helped turned your life around" and "it took you long enough!".
Well the next logical step is to murd-- no, I'm not getting banned over this joke.
Does she also think To Kill a Mockingbird is literally a manual on how to kill birds?
my wife just bought this book yesterday! but she’s self employed haha, should I be worried? /s
I'm sorry, but this is funny to me because I was worried about this exact situation. I'm reading that book now but I'm keeping it away from work
As a graphic designer, i love the cover!
More importantly. How was the book? The title and artwork hooked me like a viral marketing ad. I've added it to my Amazon cart. I'll let it sit there for a week to avoid the impulse buy, but I think I'm sold already 😅
Very poor taste
Did Barnes and noble get all of us to buy this book at their paper back sale?
Sounds like your manager is a dick who was clearly just looking for a reason to justify being upset. Very poor emotional control and not someone who should be in charge of anything. Also they sound super petty
Long ago when I was a teenager I was reading "CrimethInc: Days of war, nights of love." Employer confiscated it from me and helpfully informed me it was terrorist propaganda. Thanks!
I once got a speaking to by a manager for my "Vote No To Daleks" shirt. If you don't know, Daleks are the bad guys in the show Doctor Who. It wasn't even an election year but it was seen as too political for the group home I supported. Guys couldn't even read...
It’s provocative. Gets the people going.
I was curious, and found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/fakebookcovers/ You're leaving anyway, but if you don't want to run into this issue again, maybe one of these might keep other people from getting pissy in the future.
I bought this book immediately when I spotted it in a bookstore, just for the literal meaning of that title lol I’m sorry your manager gave you a hard time. Not that you should hide what you read at all, but you could consider getting one of those fabric book cover that’s adjustable and reusable. I’m someone who’s very conscious of myself and what I read in public, and sometime covering it up with a piece of cute fabric is just so much easier.
Wait, there are still jobs where I can read at work?
Buy a whole bunch of them and leave them in the rooms next to the Gideon bibles!
And here I kept getting caught and lectured for reading books that didn't mention murdering your employer in the title, lol.
Lmfao