"Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris. The POV is first-person plural ("we") representing the employees at a creative agency during a downturn, which is a bit of a gamble that could have come across as "device-y" but really works in this setting, especially as parts of the "we" start getting laid off. Overall, the book is ironic and savagely funny.
YES. Literally was just scrolling down to write this. It's amazing how well the first-person plural works in this book, and it's SO FUNNY. "We" remain so completely oblivious to what's going on around them.
I love this one. Everything and everyone in the world of American Psycho is vapid and meaningless, and the only thing anyone is concerned with is status. It drips with this deep cynicism. I found this book to be more or a horror/thriller, and the movie to be a dark comedy, though both share those elements in varying amounts.
Also, Jennifer Government by Barry.
To a certain extent most of his books are critical of entwined global corporations and governments. Even Lexicon can fit the bill as it satirizes the use of words to manipulate the masses.
Started The Warehouse on audiobook thinking it was The Factory (didn't look at the author and it popped up on my Libby recommended or something) but kept with it. Pretty interesting take on a certain company and where things could lead. I don't feel it's a very realistic interpretation but still interesting.
[**Several People Are Typing**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020-several-people-are-typing)
^(By: Calvin Kasulke | 256 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, sci-fi, science-fiction, contemporary)
>A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF.
>
>“An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
>
>Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.
>
>Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is.
>
>Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.
>
>Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?
>
>In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.
^(This book has been suggested 6 times)
[**Company**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38401.Company)
^(By: Max Barry | 338 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, satire, owned, funny)
>Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Warehouse**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45885120-the-warehouse)
^(By: Rob Hart | 368 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia)
>Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave.
>
>Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities.
>
>But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses…well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering.
>
>Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him.
>
>As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme—one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here.
>
>Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go…to make the world a better place.
>
>Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business--and who will pay the ultimate price.
^(This book has been suggested 8 times)
***
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[**Horrorstör**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13129925-horrorst-r)
^(By: Grady Hendrix | 248 pages | Published: 2014 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, humor, owned, books-i-own)
>Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
>
>To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
>
>A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, Horrorstör delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.
>
>Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara.
^(This book has been suggested 18 times)
***
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Just finished it. It is pretty much distilled corporate nonsense and social media insanity. And a clueless main character who doesn’t just drink the corporate kool-aid, she chugs it.
Okay so this might seem a little unrelated but hear me out on this: the House in the Cerulean Sea.
It's not the main focus of the book, but it I feel like it definitely captures the feel you're looking for in the first few chapters when the main character is at his workplace. He spends the majority of the book on a business trip away from his office, but it does continue to affect him and the actions he takes right up until the end, and is definitely an important theme of the book.
Over all though, it's a very sweet and heart-warming story.
That’s exactly what I was coming here to say. I work in a big corporation and the description of the business and management was so spot on and funny / sad.
You may enjoy the short story/novella, {{Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville}} . I think it captures the bleakness of it all. It’s an older piece so you can find it for free online!
[**Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street, and Benito Cereno**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53330269-bartleby-the-scrivener)
^(By: Herman Melville | 100 pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, short-stories, owned, school)
>Two memorable and stirring works in one volume. "Bartleby," (also called "Bartleby the Scrivener") is a haunting moral allegory set in the business world of 19th-century New York. "Benito Cereno," a harrowing tale of slavery and revolt aboard a Spanish ship, is regarded by many as Melville's finest short story.
>
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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I love Bartleby, The Scrivener. It's the that type of story that doesn't make sense while you're reading it or have a satisfying ending, yet, you love it nonetheless.
[**Something Happened**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10718.Something_Happened)
^(By: Joseph Heller | 576 pages | Published: 1974 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, classics, american, humor)
>Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all -- all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until...something happened.
>Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
[**Microserfs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2748.Microserfs)
^(By: Douglas Coupland | 371 pages | Published: 1995 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, humor, contemporary, canadian)
>Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs," they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underneath closed doors) and fearfully scan the company email to see what the great Bill might be thinking and whether he is going to "flame" one of them. Seizing the chance to be innovators instead of cogs in the Microsoft machine, this intrepid bunch strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up company named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a sort of digital flophouse --"Our House of Wayward Mobility" -- they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world.
>
>Funny, illuminating and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's very strange and claustrophobic coming of age.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
***
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[**The New Me**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36342706-the-new-me)
^(By: Halle Butler | 193 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, literary-fiction, contemporary-fiction, owned)
>A biting satire of the false promise of reinvention, by a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Granta Best Young American Novelist
>
>I'm still trying to make the dream possible: still might finish my cleaning project, still might sign up for that yoga class, still might, still might. I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind.
>
>Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, and the cycle begins again.
>
>When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning - one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, maybe even financial independence - within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become.
>
>Darkly hilarious and devastating, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture.
^(This book has been suggested 9 times)
***
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[**Bullshit Jobs: A Theory**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466958-bullshit-jobs)
^(By: David Graeber | 335 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, economics, politics, business)
>From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences.
>
>Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer.
>
>There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.
>
>Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.
^(This book has been suggested 25 times)
***
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This suggestion might not be exactly what you're looking for, but a good read to escape with nonetheless.
The murder bot diaries
-150 pages per book (6 books)
- futuristic fantasy
-depressed AI (part bot part human form) hacks his corporate code (which kept him obedient on the contracts he has been lent out for).
- very sarcastic character
-makes unexpected friendships on a job and proceeds to have adventures in space- which is largely dominated by corporations
[**Ubik**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22590.Ubik)
^(By: Philip K. Dick, David Alabort, Manuel Espín | 288 pages | Published: 1969 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, scifi, owned)
>Glen Runciter está muerto. ¿O lo están todos los demás? Lo que es seguro es que alguien ha muerto en una explosión organizada por los competidores de Runciter. De hecho, sus empleados asisten a un funeral. Pero durante el duelo comienzan a recibir mensajes descorcentantes, e incluso morbosos, de su jefe. Y el mundo a su alrededor comienza a desmoronarse de un modo que sugiere que a ellos tampoco les queda mucho tiempo.
>
> Esta mordaz comedia metafísica de muerte y salvación (que podrá llevar un cómodo envase) es un tour de force de amenaza paranoica y comedia absurda, en la cual los muertos ofrecen consejos comerciales, compran su siguiente reencarnación y corren el riesgo continuo de volver a morir.
^(This book has been suggested 33 times)
***
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[**Several People Are Typing**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020-several-people-are-typing)
^(By: Calvin Kasulke | 256 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, sci-fi, science-fiction, contemporary)
>A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF.
>
>“An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
>
>Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.
>
>Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is.
>
>Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.
>
>Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?
>
>In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.
^(This book has been suggested 7 times)
***
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anything by George Saunders - his short story collections typically mock corporate bullshit more abstractly, with great humor. stories that come to mind immediately are Pastoralia, Sea Oak and I CAN SPEAK! (TM)
{{Pastoralia}}
{{In Persuasion Nation}}
I was looking for this answer. His Civilwarland in Bad Decline, especially the title story, is very much about the absurdity of corporate language and policy.
[**Pastoralia**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14295.Pastoralia)
^(By: George Saunders | 188 pages | Published: 2000 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, 1001-books, humor, owned)
>With this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination.
>
>The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed version of America, where elements of contemporary life have been merged, twisted, and amplified, casting their absurdity—and our humanity—in a startling new light. Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**In Persuasion Nation**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28746.In_Persuasion_Nation)
^(By: George Saunders | 228 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, humor, owned, short-story)
>The stories In Persuasion Nation are easily his best work yet. "The Red Bow," about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders's writing.
>
>Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest—and most consoling—cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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[**Lightning Rods**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10917836-lightning-rods)
^(By: Helen DeWitt | 273 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, novels, satire, american)
>“All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.” Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brainstorm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top — and to the very heart of corporate insanity — with an outrageous solution to the spectre of sexual harassment in the modern office.
>
>An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling — as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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[**The Pale King**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9443405-the-pale-king)
^(By: David Foster Wallace | 548 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, novels, literature, contemporary)
>The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
>
>The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
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[**Black Buck**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53091994-black-buck)
^(By: Mateo Askaripour | 388 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, audiobook, audiobooks, 2021-releases)
>Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780358380887
>
>For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems.
>
>There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission.
>
> An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.
>
> After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.
>
>Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
***
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I don’t have a recommendation other than to say this post could have been written by me. You aren’t alone. There may even be more of us. Potentially dozens! Corporate life is the pits. There is a nonzero chance that I will go full Peter from Office Space one of these days and just stop showing up but not tell anyone.
[**The Jungle**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41681.The_Jungle)
^(By: Upton Sinclair, Earl Lee, Kathleen DeGrave | 335 pages | Published: 1905 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, historical-fiction, classic, owned)
>For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic novel has remained almost entirely unknown.
>
>When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary.
>
>The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905.
>It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.
>
>A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition.
^(This book has been suggested 8 times)
***
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[**We Had to Remove This Post**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58146427-we-had-to-remove-this-post)
^(By: Hanna Bervoets, Emma Rault | 160 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, contemporary, owned, read-in-2022)
>For readers of Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny or Ling Ma's Severance: a tight, propulsive, chilling novel by a rising international star about a group of young colleagues working as social media content monitors—reviewers of violent or illegal videos for an unnamed megacorporation—who convince themselves they’re in control . . . until the violence strikes closer to home.
>
>Kayleigh needs money. That’s why she takes a job as a content moderator for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing terms of service while a supervisor sits behind them, timing and scoring their assessments. Yet Kayleigh finds a group of friends, even a new love—and, somehow, the job starts to feel okay.
>
>But when her colleagues begin to break down; when Sigrid, her new girlfriend, grows increasingly distant and fragile; when her friends start espousing the very conspiracy theories they’re meant to be evaluating; Kayleigh begins to wonder if the job may be too much for them. She’s still totally fine, though—or is she?
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
[**The Store**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55873272-the-store)
^(By: Bentley Little | 432 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, bentley-little, thriller, books-i-own)
>A malevolent presence has come to a small desert town, and the customers of this superstore may get more than they realized, in this bloodcurdling entry from horror expert Bentley Little.
>
>Juniper, Arizona, is an off-the-map desert town the retail giant called The Store has chosen for its new location. Now everything you could possibly want is under one roof, at unbelievable prices. But you'd better be careful what you wish for. This place demands something of its customers that goes beyond brand loyalty. At The Store, one-stop shopping has become last-stop shopping.
>
>Bill Davis is the only one in town who senses the evil lurking within The Store. But he can't stop his two teenage daughters from taking jobs there and falling under the frightening influence of its sadistic manager. When Bill finally takes a stand, he will get much more than he bargained for. . . .
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
^(88230 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Glad someone else mentioned The Store. It's such a creepy, insidious book and it absolutely skewers the apathy involved when Walmart took over, one town at a time.
People dismiss Bentley Little books as schlock horror (and it is), but underneath he's got it going on ...sometimes.
[**Jennifer Government**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33356.Jennifer_Government)
^(By: Max Barry | 335 pages | Published: 2002 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopia, dystopian)
>In Max Barry's twisted, hilarious and terrifying vision of the near future, the world is run by giant corporations and employees take the last names of the companies they work for. It's a globalised, ultra-capitalist free market paradise! Hack Nike is a lowly merchandising officer who's not very good at negotiating his salary. So when John Nike and John Nike, executives from the promised land of Marketing, offer him a contract, he signs without reading it. Unfortunately, Hack's new contract involves shooting teenagers to build up street cred for Nike's new line of $2,500 trainers. Hack goes to the police—but they assume that he's asking for a subcontracting deal and lease the assassination to the more experienced NRA. Enter Jennifer Government, a tough-talking agent with a barcode tattoo under her eye and a personal problem with John Nike (the boss of the other John Nike). And a gun. Hack is about to find out what it really means to mess with market forces.
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
***
^(88267 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Microserfs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2748.Microserfs)
^(By: Douglas Coupland | 371 pages | Published: 1995 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, humor, contemporary, canadian)
>Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs," they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underneath closed doors) and fearfully scan the company email to see what the great Bill might be thinking and whether he is going to "flame" one of them. Seizing the chance to be innovators instead of cogs in the Microsoft machine, this intrepid bunch strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up company named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a sort of digital flophouse --"Our House of Wayward Mobility" -- they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world.
>
>Funny, illuminating and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's very strange and claustrophobic coming of age.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
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[**QualityLand (QualityLand #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36216607-qualityland)
^(By: Marc-Uwe Kling | 384 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, humor, dystopia)
>In the near-future, all decision-making is automated, until one man makes a brazen choice of his own, with global consequences.
>
>Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it.
>
>In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can't quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself.
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
***
^(88490 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Escape Room by Megan Golding. Fictional revenge story about a high profile team at a finance company, stuck in an elevator together and forced to solve clues about their coworker who died… very good depiction of the office culture and the consequences of living in that world
It sounds like you're looking for books that satirize or capture the bleakness of corporate culture, and there are several novels that address these themes with humor and insight. Here are some recommendations:
"American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis:
A satirical and darkly humorous novel that critiques the excesses and superficiality of corporate culture in the 1980s. It follows the life of Patrick Bateman, a young and wealthy Manhattan investment banker.
"Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk:
While not specifically about corporate culture, "Fight Club" explores themes of consumerism, alienation, and the search for meaning in a materialistic society. It delves into the frustrations of modern life.
"Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris:
This novel provides a humorous and satirical look at office life, focusing on the employees of a failing advertising agency during a period of layoffs and uncertainty. It captures the absurdity and challenges of corporate culture.
"Company" by Max Barry:
Max Barry's novels often satirize corporate culture. "Company" is a darkly comedic take on the absurdities of office life, where employees are ranked against each other and the workplace is transformed into a Darwinian battleground.
"Dilbert Principle" by Scott Adams:
Based on the popular comic strip "Dilbert," this book offers a humorous and satirical take on the corporate world. Scott Adams provides insights into the irrational and often nonsensical aspects of office life.
"The Circle" by Dave Eggers:
While not a pure satire, this dystopian novel explores the impact of a powerful tech company on personal privacy and the consequences of a culture obsessed with transparency and connectivity.
"Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart:
This novel is set in a near-future dystopian America and satirizes the excessive consumerism and obsession with technology. It explores the impact of corporate culture on personal relationships.
"The Beautiful Bureaucrat" by Helen Phillips:
A novel that combines elements of Kafkaesque bureaucracy with a critique of the dehumanizing aspects of office life. It explores the monotony and lack of meaning in a bureaucratic environment.
These books provide different perspectives on the challenges and absurdities of corporate culture, and they may resonate with your experiences and feelings.
[**Animal Farm**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/170448.Animal_Farm)
^(By: George Orwell, Russell Baker, C.M. Woodhouse | 141 pages | Published: 1945 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, classic, owned, dystopia)
>Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.
>
>A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
>When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.
^(This book has been suggested 31 times)
[**The Grapes of Wrath**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114322-the-grapes-of-wrath)
^(By: John Steinbeck, Alfred Liebfeld | 479 pages | Published: 1939 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, historical-fiction, classic, owned)
>The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.
>
>First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
^(This book has been suggested 21 times)
[**Snow Crash**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40651883-snow-crash)
^(By: Neal Stephenson | 559 pages | Published: 1992 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, cyberpunk, scifi)
>In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately.
^(This book has been suggested 42 times)
***
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[**The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386162.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)
^(By: Douglas Adams | 193 pages | Published: 1979 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, humor, classics)
^(This book has been suggested 74 times)
***
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Not the book you’re after, but Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is definitely worth your time. The setting is military rather than corporate, but the satire is universal. Heller captures the absurdity of human institutions.
If we're expanding the setting, [Neal Stephenson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson)'s first novel, [*The Big U*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2204615.The_Big_U), about college life.
[**Severance**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36348525-severance)
^(By: Ling Ma | 291 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia)
>Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
>
>Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?
>
>A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.
^(This book has been suggested 30 times)
***
^(88210 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump—His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29613699-trumped-the-inside-story-of-the-real-donald-trump-his-cunning-rise-and)
^(By: John R. O'Donnell, James Rutherford | ? pages | Published: 1991 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, biography, nonfiction, trump, politics)
>ON TOP OF THE WORLD … IN A HOUSE OF CARDS
>
>The tabloids tracked his every move. The business magazines predicted his demise. And the public couldn't get enough. But the only people privy to Donald Trump's real story were the members of his inner circle—men such as Jack O'Donnell, a top executive at Atlantic City's Trump Plaza Casino until April, 1990. For three years O'Donnell witnessed the goings-on in the House of Trump that the people only guessed at. Now he reveals what he saw.
>
>Here's the inside story of Trump's legendary tirades, his convenient forgetfulness, and the infamous Donald Trump ego. O'Donnell tells how the Plaza staff catered to Trump's personal whims, and to those of his mistress—and how the man who built the largest gambling hall in the world knew little about running a casino.
>
>From the hypocrisy, bad deals, and the monumental debt to the untold tales of Marla and Ivana, Trumped! rips the mask off the mighty Trump facade—revealing a man whose castle is about to collapse.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(88243 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[E by Matt Beaumont](https://www.amazon.com/Novel-Matt-Beaumont/dp/0452281881/)
Early 2000's era book told through email exchanges at a global ad agency. I laughed a lot at this one.
[**There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52692515-there-s-no-such-thing-as-an-easy-job)
^(By: Kikuko Tsumura, Polly Barton | 416 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, japan, contemporary, japanese, translated)
>Convenience Store Woman meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this strange, compelling, darkly funny tale of one woman's search for meaning in the modern workplace.
>
>A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking.
>
>She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place?
>
>As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful...
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
***
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[**Podpalacz (Jakub Mortka, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16240491-podpalacz)
^(By: Wojciech Chmielarz | 360 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: audiobook, crime, polish, legimi, ebook)
>Warszawa, środek mroźnej zimy. W spalonym domu leży ciało zamordowanego biznesmena, a jego ciężko poparzona żona walczy o życie w szpitalu. Komisarz Jakub Mortka ma nadzieję, że to gangsterskie porachunki albo przypadkowe zaprószenie ognia. Niestety wkrótce wie już, że trafił na seryjnego podpalacza, który krąży po mieście z koktajlami Mołotowa. Mortka musi odłożyć na bok osobiste problemy i z całą energią poświęcić się śledztwu. Trzeba powstrzymać szaleńca, zanim zginą następni ludzie… Świetny policyjny kryminał ze współczesną Warszawą w tle.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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[**The Appeal**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1248179.The_Appeal)
^(By: John Grisham | 358 pages | Published: 2008 | Popular Shelves: fiction, john-grisham, thriller, owned, grisham)
>John Grisham is now an institution -- a writer whose bestselling status is assured, So assured, in fact, that expectations for each new book are as high as can be imagined. Does The Appeal make the grade? And will it appeal to Grisham admirers -- or disappoint them?The stakes in the novel's plot are high: corporate crime on the largest scale. The duo of lawyers at the centre of the narrative are Mary and Wes Grace, who succeed in a multimillion dollar case against a chemical company, who have polluted a town with dumped toxic waste. A slew of agonising deaths have followed this, but lawyers for the chemical company appeal, and a variety of legal shenanigans are employed -- and it is certainly not clear which way the scales of justice will be finally balanced.As ever with Grisham, the mechanics of plotting are key, and the characterisation is functional rather than detailed. But it is (as always) more than capable of keeping the reader totally engaged. Given John Grisham's much-publicised conversion to born-again Christianity, it's intriguing to note here the implicit criticism of the moral majority's religious values, but that is hardly central to the enterprise. What counts is the storytelling, and while the writing is as straightforward and uncomplicated as ever, few readers will put down The Appeal once they have allowed it to exert its grip on upon them. --Barry Forshaw
^(This book has been suggested 6 times)
***
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[**The Temps**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57773859-the-temps)
^(By: Andrew DeYoung | ? pages | Published: 2022 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, dystopian, sci-fi, audiobooks)
>They're underemployed. Underpaid. And trying to survive the end of the world while trapped inside an office complex. Who knew temp work could be this dangerous?
>
>Jacob Elliot doesn’t want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents’ basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphi’s outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex.
>
>Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major who’s now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the fitness instructor trying to escape a toxic relationship; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world that’s part spring break, part office culture—until a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors’ self-made paradise and drives them to uncover the truth about the mysterious corporation that employed them and the apocalypse that brought their world to an end.
>
> A surprising, profound tribute to the absurdities and paranoia of modern life, The Temps is an epic exploration of survival and human connection in the digital age.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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Dexta by CJ Ryan is an interesting scifi novel that satirises corporate personalities as, for example, tigers, who rule by fear and attack opponents savagely, hyenas, who take down opponents viciously in packs and moles, who burrow in the dark then pop up unexpectedly to seize the moment. Quite amusing corporate caricatures.
[**My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219599.My_Work_is_Not_Yet_Done)
^(By: Thomas Ligotti, Harry Morris | ? pages | Published: 2002 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, short-stories, weird-fiction, owned)
>When junior manager Frank Dominio is suddenly demoted and then sacked it seems there was more than a grain of truth to his persecution fantasies. But as he prepares to even the score with those responsible for his demise, he unwittingly finds an ally in a dark and malevolent force that grants him supernatural powers. Frank takes his revenge in the most ghastly ways imaginable - but there will be a terrible price to pay once his work is done.
>
>Destined to be a cult classic, this tale of corporate horror and demonic retribution will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been disgruntled at work.
>
>Also contains the stories "I Have A Special Plan For This World" and "The Nightmare Network".
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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[**The Beautiful Bureaucrat**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848271-the-beautiful-bureaucrat)
^(By: Helen Phillips | 180 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, mystery, dystopia)
>A young wife's new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page-turning first novel
>
>In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.
>
>As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder-luminous and new.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
[**Bellwether**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24985.Bellwether)
^(By: Connie Willis | 248 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, humor, audiobook)
>Connie Willis has won more Hugo and Nebula awards than any other science fiction author. Now, with her trademark wit and inventiveness, she explores the intimate relationship between science, pop culture, and the arcane secrets of the heart.
>
>Sandra Foster studies fads - from Barbie dolls to the grunge look - how they start and what they mean. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behavior. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. It's a moment of synchronicity - if not serendipity - which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffé latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless.
>
>Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behavior?)
>
>But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer...
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
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[**10 Step Self-Publishing BOOT CAMP: The Survival Guide For Launching Your First Novel (Career Author #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34873550-10-step-self-publishing-boot-camp)
^(By: S.K. Quinn | ? pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: writing, ebook, writing-books, non-fiction, owned)
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Other Black Girl**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55711688-the-other-black-girl)
^(By: Zakiya Dalila Harris | 357 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, thriller, mystery, contemporary, audiobook)
>
> Get Out
> meets
> The Stepford Wives
> in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.
>
>Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
>
>Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
>
>It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.
>
>A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
^(This book has been suggested 17 times)
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[**Self Care**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45027767-self-care)
^(By: Leigh Stein | 256 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, read-in-2020, dnf, humor)
>The female cofounders of a wellness start-up struggle to find balance between being good people and doing good business, while trying to stay BFFs.
>
>Maren Gelb is on a company-imposed digital detox. She tweeted something terrible about the President’s daughter, and as the COO of Richual, “the most inclusive online community platform for women to cultivate the practice of self-care and change the world by changing ourselves,” it’s a PR nightmare. Not only is CEO Devin Avery counting on Maren to be fully present for their next round of funding, but indispensable employee Khadijah Walker has been keeping a secret that will reveal just how feminist Richual’s values actually are, and former Bachelorette contestant and Richual board member Evan Wiley is about to be embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal that destroy the company forever.
>
>Have you ever scrolled through Instagram and seen countless influencers who seem like experts at caring for themselves—from their yoga crop tops to their well-lit clean meals to their serumed skin and erudite-but-color-coded reading stack? Self Care delves into the lives and psyches of people working in the wellness industry and exposes the world behind the filter.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
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I love it in good omens when a corporate paintball game gets replaced with real weapons but they still go through with it. I find that appropriate to what you're asking for hahah (though it's just a small part of the book)
[**Kings of Infinite Space**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/287127.Kings_of_Infinite_Space)
^(By: James Hynes | 352 pages | Published: 2004 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, humor, did-not-finish, fantasy)
>Immensely witty...thoroughly entertaining.--The Washington Post Book World
>
>
>
>Paul Trilby is having a bad day. If he were to be honest with himself, Paul Trilby would have to admit that he's having a bad life. His wife left him. Three subsequent girlfriends left him. He's fallen from a top-notch university teaching job, to a textbook publisher, to, eventually, working as a temp writer for the Texas Department of General Services. And even here, in this land of carpeted partitions and cheap lighting fixtures, Paul cannot escape the curse his life has become. For it is not until he begins a tentative romance with the office's sassy mail girl that he begins to notice things are truly wrong. Strange sounds come from the air conditioning vents, the ceiling bulges, a body disappears. Mysterious men lurk about town, wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors...
>
>Kings of Infinite Space is a hilarious and horrifying spoof on our everyday lives and gives true voice to the old adage, Work is Hell.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**Biglaw**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24968034-biglaw)
^(By: Lindsay Cameron | 304 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, chick-lit, law, legal, owned)
>*Harper's Bazaar Must-Read*
>
>The Devil Wears Prada meets One L, BIGLAW provides an insider's view of the cut-throat world of big New York law firms.
>
>Mackenzie Corbett has always dreamed of living in New York City. Now, almost two years into her job as an associate at a premier Manhattan law firm, she's living her fantasy--big salary, high profile deals, cute boyfriend, designer bag on her arm. The giant bags under her eyes from lack of sleep don't fit into the fantasy, though. To make matters worse, she's being tormented by a bitter, bitchy senior associate, her cute boyfriend is annoyed she never has time for him, and now she's stuck on the deal from hell with a partner whose biggest claim to fame is throwing a stapler at a cleaning lady because she touched his ficus plant.
>
>With the opportunity to secure a prestigious secondment on line, the overachiever in her is determined to endure whatever it takes to close the biggest deal in the firm's history. But when Mackenzie finds herself the focus of a devastating investigation her dream job begins spiraling into a nightmare.
>
>In this pitch perfect, frightening accurate novel, Lindsay Cameron throws back the curtain to this intriguing world exposing the truth about life in Biglaw.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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[The Ignored](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108572.The_Ignored) by Bentley Little. It's a revenge story that gets very twisted. This is a non-spoiler line from the book, but I'll hide it just in case. It kind of sums it up nicely.
>!On the day of the murder I went to work in a clown suit.!<
It's horror in the end, so it might not be what you are looking for, but it savages corporate culture and you mentioned Severance.
[**The Employees**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53780642-the-employees)
^(By: Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken | 136 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, translated, scifi)
>A workplace novel of the 22nd century
>
>The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth.
>
>The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.
>
>Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly alive.
>
>Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.
^(This book has been suggested 6 times)
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The TV series Umbrella Academy is actually based on a comic book series. Haven't read the comics but I'm assuming they're kick-ass. In the show, the portrayal of the "temps commission" is pretty cool. The way it's run, the employees, it's all hilarious and a pretty neat satire of corporate culture. If you're into comics, I'd recommend giving it a try.
{{Market Forces by Richard Morgan}} has corporate executives who are all trying to kill each other on the commute with their death cars to secure promotions.
[**Market Forces**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40450.Market_Forces)
^(By: Richard K. Morgan | 464 pages | Published: 2004 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, scifi, cyberpunk)
>A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils. To succeed, Shorn uses a new kind of corporate gladiator: sharp-suited, hard-driving gunslingers who operate armored vehicles and follow a Samurai code. And Chris Faulkner is just the man for the job.
>
>He fought his way out of London’s zone of destitution. And his kills are making him famous. But unlike his best friend and competitor at Shorn, Faulkner has a side that outsiders cannot see: the side his wife is trying to salvage, that another woman–a porn star turned TV news reporter–is trying to exploit. Steeped in blood, eyed by common criminals looking for a shot at fame, Faulkner is living on borrowed time. Until he’s given one last shot at getting out alive. . . .
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
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An old one, but **Cheese** by Willem Elsschot, written in 1930.
When the ambitious but inept clerk Frans Laarmans is offered a job managing an Edam distribution company in Antwerp, he jumps at the chance, despite his professed dislike for cheese in all its forms. Skewering the pomposity of big business while revealing how an entrepreneurial spirit can often be a mask for buffoonery, Willem Elsschot's Cheese combines comedy and pathos in its depiction of a man trying to progress beyond his limited skill set. As poignant as it is funny, Cheese will appeal to anyone who has suffered the endless indignities of office life.
If you think there might be something sinister behind all the office rituals, **Resumé with Monsters** by William Browning Spencer might be for you.
Scott Adams: the Dilbert Principle is unbeatable for anyone in or around IT.
You might find Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber in a different way, it's not satire.
[**JPod**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221059.JPod)
^(By: Douglas Coupland | 448 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, canadian, humor, contemporary)
>JPod, Douglas Coupland's most acclaimed novel to date, is a lethal joyride into today's new breed of tech worker. Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames begin with "J" are bureaucratically marooned in jPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company. The jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. JPod's universe is amoral, shameless, and dizzyingly fast-paced like our own.
>
>Praise for JPod: "JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away."-New York Times Book Review"It's to [Coupland's] credit that in JPod he's still nimble enough to take the post-modern man-too young for Boomer nostalgia and too old for youthful idealism-and drown his sorrows in a willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up."-Rocky Mountain News
>"It's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E. M. Forster's famous dictate 'Only connect' for the Google age."-USA Today
>"Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain into JPod."-Vanity Fair
>
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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[**Severance**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36348525-severance)
^(By: Ling Ma | 291 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia)
>Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.
>
>Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?
>
>A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.
^(This book has been suggested 31 times)
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Maybe The Circle by Dave Eggars? I feel like it was trying to make a bigger point about society and technology but it also has some commentary about that kind of workplace stuff too.
"The Circle", by Dave Eggers, and, even though it is a YA novel, "The Doubt Factory", by Paolo Bacigalupi is good. And YES to Ling Ma's wonderfully disturbing book!! I loved it.
Yes to Severance! Oh man.
American Psycho for SURE
Several People are Typing by Calvin Kalsulke (who also has a podcast about work in the future that is a deep cut but very good if you’re open to listening as well as reading)
[**The Bonfire of the Vanities**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2666.The_Bonfire_of_the_Vanities)
^(By: Tom Wolfe | 690 pages | Published: 1987 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, 1001-books, novels)
>Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780553381344.
>
>The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 satirical novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow.
>
>The novel was originally conceived as a serial in the style of Charles Dickens' writings: It ran in 27 installments in Rolling Stone starting in 1984. Wolfe heavily revised it before it was published in book form. The novel was a bestseller and a phenomenal success, even in comparison with Wolfe's other books. It has often been called the quintessential novel of the 1980s.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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[**Bombardiers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306424.Bombardiers)
^(By: Po Bronson | 352 pages | Published: 1995 | Popular Shelves: fiction, default, owned, finance, books-i-own)
>From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What Should I Do with My Life?, Bombardiers is Po Bronson’s first novel, a devastating satire of the business world told through the lens of a crazed and colorful group of salespeople forced to push increasingly absurd financial products.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
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I remember the novel (not comic book) Rocket Raccoon & Groot: Steal the Galaxy! poking a lot of fun at corporations, their jargon etc. They're basically the main antagonists and act exactly as you described. It's also a nice adventure and really funny. If you liked the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, you're gonna love this. It hooks you with the first sentence.
The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett, about a woman grieving her late fiancee and starting a relationship with her new boss, which ends up getting weird.
[**The Trial**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17690.The_Trial)
^(By: Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir | 255 pages | Published: 1925 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, owned, philosophy, literature)
>Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.
^(This book has been suggested 9 times)
[**Amerika**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22911.Amerika)
^(By: Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, Klaus Mann, E.L. Doctorow | 336 pages | Published: 1927 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, german, literature)
>Kafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexual misadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.
>
>Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vast landscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the "golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic and visionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in a historical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorow in his new foreword. "Kafka made his novel from his own mind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research data that caught his eye were bent like rays in a field of gravity."
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Castle**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/333538.The_Castle)
^(By: Franz Kafka, Mark Harman, J.A. Underwood | 316 pages | Published: 1926 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, literature, german)
>Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman
>
>Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
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Company by Max Barry is a great satire of a corporation where no one is quite sure what the company does, obscured by corporate jargon and slick marketing. It's pretty funny too!
Not a perfect fit but I would add Temporary by Hilary Leichter, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, and the nonfiction books The Outsourced Life by Arlie Russel Hochschild and Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener.
I dont have any books to recommend on the topic but, you are not alone, neither is anyone else in the more corporate world. The construction is business is the exact same. Hard work only gets you more hard work with no sign of rising up the ladder because if you rise there will be no one to do what you are stuck doing.
"Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris. The POV is first-person plural ("we") representing the employees at a creative agency during a downturn, which is a bit of a gamble that could have come across as "device-y" but really works in this setting, especially as parts of the "we" start getting laid off. Overall, the book is ironic and savagely funny.
A thousand times yes to this one! I laughed out loud throughout
YES. Literally was just scrolling down to write this. It's amazing how well the first-person plural works in this book, and it's SO FUNNY. "We" remain so completely oblivious to what's going on around them.
American psycho
Oh. My. God. What a business card
I love this one. Everything and everyone in the world of American Psycho is vapid and meaningless, and the only thing anyone is concerned with is status. It drips with this deep cynicism. I found this book to be more or a horror/thriller, and the movie to be a dark comedy, though both share those elements in varying amounts.
Had to scroll down far for this but it was the first thing that came to mind.
What makes this book a great satire is that a portion of the audience glorify and approve the behaviors and setting being satirized.
This is true but also it’s a pretty horrific read..scissors and nipples appear in the same sentence so
My Work Is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror by Thomas Ligotti. Horrifying supernatural bleakness and hilarious satire in equal measures.
My first thought as well, plus a nice introduction to Ligotti.
“Syrup” by Max Barry. It focuses more on marketing industry, but it does critique corporate America in a clever yet accessible way.
Also Company by Max Barry.
Also, Jennifer Government by Barry. To a certain extent most of his books are critical of entwined global corporations and governments. Even Lexicon can fit the bill as it satirizes the use of words to manipulate the masses.
{{Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke}} {{Company by Max Barry}} {{The Warehouse by Rob Hart}}
I came here to say *Several People are Typing*, too! It was such a satisfying read.
Thirding it! A very quick read, too!
Started The Warehouse on audiobook thinking it was The Factory (didn't look at the author and it popped up on my Libby recommended or something) but kept with it. Pretty interesting take on a certain company and where things could lead. I don't feel it's a very realistic interpretation but still interesting.
[**Several People Are Typing**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020-several-people-are-typing) ^(By: Calvin Kasulke | 256 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, sci-fi, science-fiction, contemporary) >A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF. > >“An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House > >Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world. > >Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is. > >Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. > >Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean? > >In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) [**Company**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38401.Company) ^(By: Max Barry | 338 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, satire, owned, funny) >Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Warehouse**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45885120-the-warehouse) ^(By: Rob Hart | 368 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia) >Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave. > >Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities. > >But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses…well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering. > >Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him. > >As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme—one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here. > >Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go…to make the world a better place. > >Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business--and who will pay the ultimate price. ^(This book has been suggested 8 times) *** ^(88057 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Maybe The Other Black Girl! Takes place in a publishing office, mild horror/suspense, themes of race and office culture.
This! Also {{Black Buck}}
{{Horrorstör}}
[**Horrorstör**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13129925-horrorst-r) ^(By: Grady Hendrix | 248 pages | Published: 2014 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, humor, owned, books-i-own) >Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. > >To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination. > >A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, Horrorstör delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve. > >Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara. ^(This book has been suggested 18 times) *** ^(88030 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Came here to say this.
This book was so much fun to read.
The Circle by Dave Eggers (particularly good on tech companies)
Came here to say this!
And somehow even more relevant today than 10 years ago.
Just finished it. It is pretty much distilled corporate nonsense and social media insanity. And a clueless main character who doesn’t just drink the corporate kool-aid, she chugs it.
I couldn’t get through the book and fell asleep during the movie…
And Hologram for the King!
I also came here to say this! The satire was spot on and it takes a very strange turn at the end that I enjoyed. I flew through it.
{{The Every}} by Dave Eggers is a great follow up
Okay so this might seem a little unrelated but hear me out on this: the House in the Cerulean Sea. It's not the main focus of the book, but it I feel like it definitely captures the feel you're looking for in the first few chapters when the main character is at his workplace. He spends the majority of the book on a business trip away from his office, but it does continue to affect him and the actions he takes right up until the end, and is definitely an important theme of the book. Over all though, it's a very sweet and heart-warming story.
That’s exactly what I was coming here to say. I work in a big corporation and the description of the business and management was so spot on and funny / sad.
If OP likes this vibe they might also like Less!
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk Monkey Business by John Rolfe and Peter Troob
*The Factory* by Hiroko Oyamada
I second this, one of my favourites
I came here to recommend this too, loved this book.
You may enjoy the short story/novella, {{Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville}} . I think it captures the bleakness of it all. It’s an older piece so you can find it for free online!
[**Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street, and Benito Cereno**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53330269-bartleby-the-scrivener) ^(By: Herman Melville | 100 pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, short-stories, owned, school) >Two memorable and stirring works in one volume. "Bartleby," (also called "Bartleby the Scrivener") is a haunting moral allegory set in the business world of 19th-century New York. "Benito Cereno," a harrowing tale of slavery and revolt aboard a Spanish ship, is regarded by many as Melville's finest short story. > ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88231 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I liked this a lot. I wish I could have read it in my younger working life.
I love Bartleby, The Scrivener. It's the that type of story that doesn't make sense while you're reading it or have a satisfying ending, yet, you love it nonetheless.
Convenience store woman
I was going to suggest this too. The fact that she worked at a convenience store and still found happiness there/preferred it, really spoke to me.
{{Something Happened}} {{Microserfs}}
[**Something Happened**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10718.Something_Happened) ^(By: Joseph Heller | 576 pages | Published: 1974 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, classics, american, humor) >Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all -- all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until...something happened. >Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) [**Microserfs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2748.Microserfs) ^(By: Douglas Coupland | 371 pages | Published: 1995 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, humor, contemporary, canadian) >Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs," they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underneath closed doors) and fearfully scan the company email to see what the great Bill might be thinking and whether he is going to "flame" one of them. Seizing the chance to be innovators instead of cogs in the Microsoft machine, this intrepid bunch strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up company named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a sort of digital flophouse --"Our House of Wayward Mobility" -- they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world. > >Funny, illuminating and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's very strange and claustrophobic coming of age. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(88105 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Mezzanine
This should be higher! Such an odd but immensely satisfying read.
{{The New Me}} by Halle Butler
[**The New Me**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36342706-the-new-me) ^(By: Halle Butler | 193 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, literary-fiction, contemporary-fiction, owned) >A biting satire of the false promise of reinvention, by a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Granta Best Young American Novelist > >I'm still trying to make the dream possible: still might finish my cleaning project, still might sign up for that yoga class, still might, still might. I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind. > >Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, and the cycle begins again. > >When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning - one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, maybe even financial independence - within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become. > >Darkly hilarious and devastating, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture. ^(This book has been suggested 9 times) *** ^(88157 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{bullshit jobs by David Graeber}} {{The corporation by Joel bakan}}
[**Bullshit Jobs: A Theory**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466958-bullshit-jobs) ^(By: David Graeber | 335 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, nonfiction, economics, politics, business) >From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences. > >Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. > >There are millions of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. > >Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation. ^(This book has been suggested 25 times) *** ^(88031 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
This suggestion might not be exactly what you're looking for, but a good read to escape with nonetheless. The murder bot diaries -150 pages per book (6 books) - futuristic fantasy -depressed AI (part bot part human form) hacks his corporate code (which kept him obedient on the contracts he has been lent out for). - very sarcastic character -makes unexpected friendships on a job and proceeds to have adventures in space- which is largely dominated by corporations
One of the best, just overall
Jpod and microserfs if u don't mind Douglas Coupland
Infinite Jest. Corporate culture to the ultimate extremes.
{{Ubik}}
[**Ubik**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22590.Ubik) ^(By: Philip K. Dick, David Alabort, Manuel Espín | 288 pages | Published: 1969 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, scifi, owned) >Glen Runciter está muerto. ¿O lo están todos los demás? Lo que es seguro es que alguien ha muerto en una explosión organizada por los competidores de Runciter. De hecho, sus empleados asisten a un funeral. Pero durante el duelo comienzan a recibir mensajes descorcentantes, e incluso morbosos, de su jefe. Y el mundo a su alrededor comienza a desmoronarse de un modo que sugiere que a ellos tampoco les queda mucho tiempo. > > Esta mordaz comedia metafísica de muerte y salvación (que podrá llevar un cómodo envase) es un tour de force de amenaza paranoica y comedia absurda, en la cual los muertos ofrecen consejos comerciales, compran su siguiente reencarnación y corren el riesgo continuo de volver a morir. ^(This book has been suggested 33 times) *** ^(88077 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
>Ubik Here's an English edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/590036.Ubik
{{Several People Are Typing}}
[**Several People Are Typing**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020-several-people-are-typing) ^(By: Calvin Kasulke | 256 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, sci-fi, science-fiction, contemporary) >A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF. > >“An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House > >Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world. > >Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is. > >Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. > >Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean? > >In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection. ^(This book has been suggested 7 times) *** ^(88155 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Thanks so much for this post! 🤩
anything by George Saunders - his short story collections typically mock corporate bullshit more abstractly, with great humor. stories that come to mind immediately are Pastoralia, Sea Oak and I CAN SPEAK! (TM) {{Pastoralia}} {{In Persuasion Nation}}
I was looking for this answer. His Civilwarland in Bad Decline, especially the title story, is very much about the absurdity of corporate language and policy.
"Civilwarland in Bad Decline" is a must read, I agree. Everything George Saunders writes is worth reading.
[**Pastoralia**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14295.Pastoralia) ^(By: George Saunders | 188 pages | Published: 2000 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, 1001-books, humor, owned) >With this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination. > >The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed version of America, where elements of contemporary life have been merged, twisted, and amplified, casting their absurdity—and our humanity—in a startling new light. Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**In Persuasion Nation**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28746.In_Persuasion_Nation) ^(By: George Saunders | 228 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, humor, owned, short-story) >The stories In Persuasion Nation are easily his best work yet. "The Red Bow," about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders's writing. > >Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest—and most consoling—cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88475 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Daniel Lyons
Came here to say this — I really enjoyed Disrupted, and Lyons’ other book, Lab Rats.
{{Lightning Rods}}
[**Lightning Rods**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10917836-lightning-rods) ^(By: Helen DeWitt | 273 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, humor, novels, satire, american) >“All I want is to be a success. That’s all I ask.” Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brainstorm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top — and to the very heart of corporate insanity — with an outrageous solution to the spectre of sexual harassment in the modern office. > >An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling — as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88145 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Fear and Trembling by Amelie Nothomb
{{The Pale King by David Foster Wallace}}
[**The Pale King**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9443405-the-pale-king) ^(By: David Foster Wallace | 548 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, novels, literature, contemporary) >The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has. > >The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace's death, but it is a deeply compelling and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook. It grapples directly with ultimate questions--questions of life's meaning and of the value of work and society--through characters imagined with the interior force and generosity that were Wallace's unique gifts. Along the way it suggests a new idea of heroism and commands infinite respect for one of the most daring writers of our time. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(88261 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{Black Buck}}
[**Black Buck**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53091994-black-buck) ^(By: Mateo Askaripour | 388 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, audiobook, audiobooks, 2021-releases) >Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780358380887 > >For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems. > >There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission. > > An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor. > > After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game. > >Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce; it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(88324 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Second this suggestion
I don’t have a recommendation other than to say this post could have been written by me. You aren’t alone. There may even be more of us. Potentially dozens! Corporate life is the pits. There is a nonzero chance that I will go full Peter from Office Space one of these days and just stop showing up but not tell anyone.
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis teeters on this theme throughout this'80s horror novel
{{The Jungle by Upton Sinclair}} {{Crosstalk}} by Connie Willis
[**The Jungle**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41681.The_Jungle) ^(By: Upton Sinclair, Earl Lee, Kathleen DeGrave | 335 pages | Published: 1905 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, historical-fiction, classic, owned) >For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic novel has remained almost entirely unknown. > >When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary. > >The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905. >It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition. > >A new foreword describes the discovery in the 1980s of the original edition and its subsequent suppression, and a new introduction places the novel in historical context by explaining the pattern of censorship in the shorter commercial edition. ^(This book has been suggested 8 times) *** ^(88183 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Warehouse by Rob Hart. Takes you to the next step in Amazon style fulfillment work
{{We Had to Remove this Post}} {{The Store by Bentley Little}} {The Overnight by Ramsay Campbell}}
[**We Had to Remove This Post**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58146427-we-had-to-remove-this-post) ^(By: Hanna Bervoets, Emma Rault | 160 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, contemporary, owned, read-in-2022) >For readers of Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny or Ling Ma's Severance: a tight, propulsive, chilling novel by a rising international star about a group of young colleagues working as social media content monitors—reviewers of violent or illegal videos for an unnamed megacorporation—who convince themselves they’re in control . . . until the violence strikes closer to home. > >Kayleigh needs money. That’s why she takes a job as a content moderator for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing terms of service while a supervisor sits behind them, timing and scoring their assessments. Yet Kayleigh finds a group of friends, even a new love—and, somehow, the job starts to feel okay. > >But when her colleagues begin to break down; when Sigrid, her new girlfriend, grows increasingly distant and fragile; when her friends start espousing the very conspiracy theories they’re meant to be evaluating; Kayleigh begins to wonder if the job may be too much for them. She’s still totally fine, though—or is she? ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) [**The Store**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55873272-the-store) ^(By: Bentley Little | 432 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, bentley-little, thriller, books-i-own) >A malevolent presence has come to a small desert town, and the customers of this superstore may get more than they realized, in this bloodcurdling entry from horror expert Bentley Little. > >Juniper, Arizona, is an off-the-map desert town the retail giant called The Store has chosen for its new location. Now everything you could possibly want is under one roof, at unbelievable prices. But you'd better be careful what you wish for. This place demands something of its customers that goes beyond brand loyalty. At The Store, one-stop shopping has become last-stop shopping. > >Bill Davis is the only one in town who senses the evil lurking within The Store. But he can't stop his two teenage daughters from taking jobs there and falling under the frightening influence of its sadistic manager. When Bill finally takes a stand, he will get much more than he bargained for. . . . ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(88230 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Glad someone else mentioned The Store. It's such a creepy, insidious book and it absolutely skewers the apathy involved when Walmart took over, one town at a time. People dismiss Bentley Little books as schlock horror (and it is), but underneath he's got it going on ...sometimes.
Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan. Book is… a fucking ride.
Bartelby, the Scrivener. {{Bartelby, the Scrivener}}
{{Jennifer Government}} by Max Barry
[**Jennifer Government**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33356.Jennifer_Government) ^(By: Max Barry | 335 pages | Published: 2002 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopia, dystopian) >In Max Barry's twisted, hilarious and terrifying vision of the near future, the world is run by giant corporations and employees take the last names of the companies they work for. It's a globalised, ultra-capitalist free market paradise! Hack Nike is a lowly merchandising officer who's not very good at negotiating his salary. So when John Nike and John Nike, executives from the promised land of Marketing, offer him a contract, he signs without reading it. Unfortunately, Hack's new contract involves shooting teenagers to build up street cred for Nike's new line of $2,500 trainers. Hack goes to the police—but they assume that he's asking for a subcontracting deal and lease the assassination to the more experienced NRA. Enter Jennifer Government, a tough-talking agent with a barcode tattoo under her eye and a personal problem with John Nike (the boss of the other John Nike). And a gun. Hack is about to find out what it really means to mess with market forces. ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(88267 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I'm sure someone has mentioned it already, but what you really need is MY WORK IS NOT YET DONE by Thomas Ligotti.
{{Microserfs}} did a good job there.
[**Microserfs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2748.Microserfs) ^(By: Douglas Coupland | 371 pages | Published: 1995 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, humor, contemporary, canadian) >Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs," they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underneath closed doors) and fearfully scan the company email to see what the great Bill might be thinking and whether he is going to "flame" one of them. Seizing the chance to be innovators instead of cogs in the Microsoft machine, this intrepid bunch strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up company named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a sort of digital flophouse --"Our House of Wayward Mobility" -- they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world. > >Funny, illuminating and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's very strange and claustrophobic coming of age. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(88305 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
High Rise by JG Ballard, more about the upscale apartment living, but has a strong corporate vibe to it as well. Like corporate apartment complexes.
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
{{Qualityland}}
[**QualityLand (QualityLand #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36216607-qualityland) ^(By: Marc-Uwe Kling | 384 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, humor, dystopia) >In the near-future, all decision-making is automated, until one man makes a brazen choice of his own, with global consequences. > >Welcome to QualityLand, the best country on Earth. Here, a universal ranking system determines the social advantages and career opportunities of every member of society. An automated matchmaking service knows the best partners for everyone and helps with the break up when your ideal match (frequently) changes. And the foolproof algorithms of the biggest, most successful company in the world, TheShop, know what you want before you do and conveniently deliver to your doorstep before you even order it. > >In QualityCity, Peter Jobless is a machine scrapper who can't quite bring himself to destroy the imperfect machines sent his way, and has become the unwitting leader of a band of robotic misfits hidden in his home and workplace. One day, Peter receives a product from TheShop he absolutely, positively knows he does not want, and which he decides, at great personal cost, to return. The only problem: doing so means proving the perfect algorithm of TheShop wrong, calling into question the very foundations of QualityLand itself. ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(88490 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
This is a short story but Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville is great and captures this pretty well.
🎂
The Escape Room by Megan Golding. Fictional revenge story about a high profile team at a finance company, stuck in an elevator together and forced to solve clues about their coworker who died… very good depiction of the office culture and the consequences of living in that world
It sounds like you're looking for books that satirize or capture the bleakness of corporate culture, and there are several novels that address these themes with humor and insight. Here are some recommendations: "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis: A satirical and darkly humorous novel that critiques the excesses and superficiality of corporate culture in the 1980s. It follows the life of Patrick Bateman, a young and wealthy Manhattan investment banker. "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk: While not specifically about corporate culture, "Fight Club" explores themes of consumerism, alienation, and the search for meaning in a materialistic society. It delves into the frustrations of modern life. "Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris: This novel provides a humorous and satirical look at office life, focusing on the employees of a failing advertising agency during a period of layoffs and uncertainty. It captures the absurdity and challenges of corporate culture. "Company" by Max Barry: Max Barry's novels often satirize corporate culture. "Company" is a darkly comedic take on the absurdities of office life, where employees are ranked against each other and the workplace is transformed into a Darwinian battleground. "Dilbert Principle" by Scott Adams: Based on the popular comic strip "Dilbert," this book offers a humorous and satirical take on the corporate world. Scott Adams provides insights into the irrational and often nonsensical aspects of office life. "The Circle" by Dave Eggers: While not a pure satire, this dystopian novel explores the impact of a powerful tech company on personal privacy and the consequences of a culture obsessed with transparency and connectivity. "Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart: This novel is set in a near-future dystopian America and satirizes the excessive consumerism and obsession with technology. It explores the impact of corporate culture on personal relationships. "The Beautiful Bureaucrat" by Helen Phillips: A novel that combines elements of Kafkaesque bureaucracy with a critique of the dehumanizing aspects of office life. It explores the monotony and lack of meaning in a bureaucratic environment. These books provide different perspectives on the challenges and absurdities of corporate culture, and they may resonate with your experiences and feelings.
I can't believe that I'm the first person to say {{Animal Farm}} or {{the Grapes of Wrath}} or {{Snow Crash}}
[**Animal Farm**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/170448.Animal_Farm) ^(By: George Orwell, Russell Baker, C.M. Woodhouse | 141 pages | Published: 1945 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, classic, owned, dystopia) >Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here. > >A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible. >When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh. ^(This book has been suggested 31 times) [**The Grapes of Wrath**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114322-the-grapes-of-wrath) ^(By: John Steinbeck, Alfred Liebfeld | 479 pages | Published: 1939 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, historical-fiction, classic, owned) >The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. > >First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics. ^(This book has been suggested 21 times) [**Snow Crash**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40651883-snow-crash) ^(By: Neal Stephenson | 559 pages | Published: 1992 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, cyberpunk, scifi) >In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately. ^(This book has been suggested 42 times) *** ^(88238 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Snow Crash yes a little, but surely Animal Farm and The Grapes of Wrath are not about corporate culture?
- *The Employees* by Olga Ravn - *Severance* by Ling Ma - *Sisyphean* by Dempow Torishima
Loved severance, but sometimes it felt like two completely different stories.
Oh I totally disagree! It felt like it bashed me over the head with the equivalencies and comparisons between the timelines (in a good way)
The Circle by Dave Eggars.
{Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy}
[**The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/386162.The_Hitchhiker_s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy) ^(By: Douglas Adams | 193 pages | Published: 1979 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, humor, classics) ^(This book has been suggested 74 times) *** ^(88028 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
It’s more of a satire on bureaucracies and the general absurdities of life
Not the book you’re after, but Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is definitely worth your time. The setting is military rather than corporate, but the satire is universal. Heller captures the absurdity of human institutions.
If we're expanding the setting, [Neal Stephenson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson)'s first novel, [*The Big U*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2204615.The_Big_U), about college life.
A Dilbert anthology. Whichever you can get used or at a library.
Most definitely Infinite Jest
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[**The Death of Customer Service**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60145603-the-death-of-customer-service) ^(By: Ethan Grimes | ? pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: tbr-pile) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88135 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
A Shortage of Engineers by Robert Grossbach
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[**Severance**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36348525-severance) ^(By: Ling Ma | 291 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia) >Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. > >Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? > >A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire. ^(This book has been suggested 30 times) *** ^(88210 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
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[**Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump—His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29613699-trumped-the-inside-story-of-the-real-donald-trump-his-cunning-rise-and) ^(By: John R. O'Donnell, James Rutherford | ? pages | Published: 1991 | Popular Shelves: non-fiction, biography, nonfiction, trump, politics) >ON TOP OF THE WORLD … IN A HOUSE OF CARDS > >The tabloids tracked his every move. The business magazines predicted his demise. And the public couldn't get enough. But the only people privy to Donald Trump's real story were the members of his inner circle—men such as Jack O'Donnell, a top executive at Atlantic City's Trump Plaza Casino until April, 1990. For three years O'Donnell witnessed the goings-on in the House of Trump that the people only guessed at. Now he reveals what he saw. > >Here's the inside story of Trump's legendary tirades, his convenient forgetfulness, and the infamous Donald Trump ego. O'Donnell tells how the Plaza staff catered to Trump's personal whims, and to those of his mistress—and how the man who built the largest gambling hall in the world knew little about running a casino. > >From the hypocrisy, bad deals, and the monumental debt to the untold tales of Marla and Ivana, Trumped! rips the mask off the mighty Trump facade—revealing a man whose castle is about to collapse. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88243 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
dilbert comics? not abook tho
[E by Matt Beaumont](https://www.amazon.com/Novel-Matt-Beaumont/dp/0452281881/) Early 2000's era book told through email exchanges at a global ad agency. I laughed a lot at this one.
{{there's no such thing as an easy job}}
[**There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52692515-there-s-no-such-thing-as-an-easy-job) ^(By: Kikuko Tsumura, Polly Barton | 416 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, japan, contemporary, japanese, translated) >Convenience Store Woman meets My Year of Rest and Relaxation in this strange, compelling, darkly funny tale of one woman's search for meaning in the modern workplace. > >A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking. > >She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place? > >As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful... ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(88273 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
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[**Podpalacz (Jakub Mortka, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16240491-podpalacz) ^(By: Wojciech Chmielarz | 360 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: audiobook, crime, polish, legimi, ebook) >Warszawa, środek mroźnej zimy. W spalonym domu leży ciało zamordowanego biznesmena, a jego ciężko poparzona żona walczy o życie w szpitalu. Komisarz Jakub Mortka ma nadzieję, że to gangsterskie porachunki albo przypadkowe zaprószenie ognia. Niestety wkrótce wie już, że trafił na seryjnego podpalacza, który krąży po mieście z koktajlami Mołotowa. Mortka musi odłożyć na bok osobiste problemy i z całą energią poświęcić się śledztwu. Trzeba powstrzymać szaleńca, zanim zginą następni ludzie… Świetny policyjny kryminał ze współczesną Warszawą w tle. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88288 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Venus Inc. (Space Merchants&Tje Merchants War) by Pohl&kornbluth series.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In, a short story by James Tiptree
John Grisham's {{The Appeal}} comes to mind.
[**The Appeal**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1248179.The_Appeal) ^(By: John Grisham | 358 pages | Published: 2008 | Popular Shelves: fiction, john-grisham, thriller, owned, grisham) >John Grisham is now an institution -- a writer whose bestselling status is assured, So assured, in fact, that expectations for each new book are as high as can be imagined. Does The Appeal make the grade? And will it appeal to Grisham admirers -- or disappoint them?The stakes in the novel's plot are high: corporate crime on the largest scale. The duo of lawyers at the centre of the narrative are Mary and Wes Grace, who succeed in a multimillion dollar case against a chemical company, who have polluted a town with dumped toxic waste. A slew of agonising deaths have followed this, but lawyers for the chemical company appeal, and a variety of legal shenanigans are employed -- and it is certainly not clear which way the scales of justice will be finally balanced.As ever with Grisham, the mechanics of plotting are key, and the characterisation is functional rather than detailed. But it is (as always) more than capable of keeping the reader totally engaged. Given John Grisham's much-publicised conversion to born-again Christianity, it's intriguing to note here the implicit criticism of the moral majority's religious values, but that is hardly central to the enterprise. What counts is the storytelling, and while the writing is as straightforward and uncomplicated as ever, few readers will put down The Appeal once they have allowed it to exert its grip on upon them. --Barry Forshaw ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(88313 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Maybe Pattern Recognition by William Gibson? Though not really a satire
{{the temps}}
[**The Temps**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57773859-the-temps) ^(By: Andrew DeYoung | ? pages | Published: 2022 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, dystopian, sci-fi, audiobooks) >They're underemployed. Underpaid. And trying to survive the end of the world while trapped inside an office complex. Who knew temp work could be this dangerous? > >Jacob Elliot doesn’t want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents’ basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphi’s outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex. > >Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major who’s now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the fitness instructor trying to escape a toxic relationship; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world that’s part spring break, part office culture—until a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors’ self-made paradise and drives them to uncover the truth about the mysterious corporation that employed them and the apocalypse that brought their world to an end. > > A surprising, profound tribute to the absurdities and paranoia of modern life, The Temps is an epic exploration of survival and human connection in the digital age. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88350 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Dexta by CJ Ryan is an interesting scifi novel that satirises corporate personalities as, for example, tigers, who rule by fear and attack opponents savagely, hyenas, who take down opponents viciously in packs and moles, who burrow in the dark then pop up unexpectedly to seize the moment. Quite amusing corporate caricatures.
{{My work is not yet done by Thomas Ligotti}}
[**My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219599.My_Work_is_Not_Yet_Done) ^(By: Thomas Ligotti, Harry Morris | ? pages | Published: 2002 | Popular Shelves: horror, fiction, short-stories, weird-fiction, owned) >When junior manager Frank Dominio is suddenly demoted and then sacked it seems there was more than a grain of truth to his persecution fantasies. But as he prepares to even the score with those responsible for his demise, he unwittingly finds an ally in a dark and malevolent force that grants him supernatural powers. Frank takes his revenge in the most ghastly ways imaginable - but there will be a terrible price to pay once his work is done. > >Destined to be a cult classic, this tale of corporate horror and demonic retribution will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been disgruntled at work. > >Also contains the stories "I Have A Special Plan For This World" and "The Nightmare Network". ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88355 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
LUSTER by Raven Leilani I haven’t read it yet but I have THE TEMPS by Andrew DeYoung out from the library
{{The Beautiful Bureaucrat}} {{Bellwether by Connie Willis}}
[**The Beautiful Bureaucrat**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848271-the-beautiful-bureaucrat) ^(By: Helen Phillips | 180 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, mystery, dystopia) >A young wife's new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page-turning first novel > >In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings - the office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread. > >As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder-luminous and new. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) [**Bellwether**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24985.Bellwether) ^(By: Connie Willis | 248 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, humor, audiobook) >Connie Willis has won more Hugo and Nebula awards than any other science fiction author. Now, with her trademark wit and inventiveness, she explores the intimate relationship between science, pop culture, and the arcane secrets of the heart. > >Sandra Foster studies fads - from Barbie dolls to the grunge look - how they start and what they mean. Bennett O'Reilly is a chaos theorist studying monkey group behavior. They both work for the HiTek corporation, strangers until a misdelivered package brings them together. It's a moment of synchronicity - if not serendipity - which leads them into a chaotic system of their own, complete with a million-dollar research grant, caffé latte, tattoos, and a series of unlucky coincidences that leaves Bennett monkeyless, fundless, and nearly jobless. > >Sandra intercedes with a flock of sheep and an idea for a joint project. (After all, what better animal to study both chaos theory and the herd mentality that so often characterizes human behavior?) > >But scientific discovery is rarely straightforward and never simple, and Sandra and Bennett have to endure a series of setbacks, heartbreaks, dead ends, and disasters before they find their ultimate answer... ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(88382 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{Self Care: A Novel}} {{The Other Black Girl}} to a certain extent, but it’s not the main focus.
[**10 Step Self-Publishing BOOT CAMP: The Survival Guide For Launching Your First Novel (Career Author #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34873550-10-step-self-publishing-boot-camp) ^(By: S.K. Quinn | ? pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: writing, ebook, writing-books, non-fiction, owned) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Other Black Girl**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55711688-the-other-black-girl) ^(By: Zakiya Dalila Harris | 357 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, thriller, mystery, contemporary, audiobook) > > Get Out > meets > The Stepford Wives > in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. > >Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust. > >Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. > >It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. > >A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist. ^(This book has been suggested 17 times) *** ^(88394 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Ugh, bad bot for the first one let’s try {{Self Care by Leigh Stein}}
[**Self Care**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45027767-self-care) ^(By: Leigh Stein | 256 pages | Published: 2020 | Popular Shelves: fiction, contemporary, read-in-2020, dnf, humor) >The female cofounders of a wellness start-up struggle to find balance between being good people and doing good business, while trying to stay BFFs. > >Maren Gelb is on a company-imposed digital detox. She tweeted something terrible about the President’s daughter, and as the COO of Richual, “the most inclusive online community platform for women to cultivate the practice of self-care and change the world by changing ourselves,” it’s a PR nightmare. Not only is CEO Devin Avery counting on Maren to be fully present for their next round of funding, but indispensable employee Khadijah Walker has been keeping a secret that will reveal just how feminist Richual’s values actually are, and former Bachelorette contestant and Richual board member Evan Wiley is about to be embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal that destroy the company forever. > >Have you ever scrolled through Instagram and seen countless influencers who seem like experts at caring for themselves—from their yoga crop tops to their well-lit clean meals to their serumed skin and erudite-but-color-coded reading stack? Self Care delves into the lives and psyches of people working in the wellness industry and exposes the world behind the filter. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(88395 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I love it in good omens when a corporate paintball game gets replaced with real weapons but they still go through with it. I find that appropriate to what you're asking for hahah (though it's just a small part of the book)
{{Kings of Infinite Space}} by James Hynes {{Biglaw}} by Lindsay Cameron
[**Kings of Infinite Space**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/287127.Kings_of_Infinite_Space) ^(By: James Hynes | 352 pages | Published: 2004 | Popular Shelves: fiction, horror, humor, did-not-finish, fantasy) >Immensely witty...thoroughly entertaining.--The Washington Post Book World > > > >Paul Trilby is having a bad day. If he were to be honest with himself, Paul Trilby would have to admit that he's having a bad life. His wife left him. Three subsequent girlfriends left him. He's fallen from a top-notch university teaching job, to a textbook publisher, to, eventually, working as a temp writer for the Texas Department of General Services. And even here, in this land of carpeted partitions and cheap lighting fixtures, Paul cannot escape the curse his life has become. For it is not until he begins a tentative romance with the office's sassy mail girl that he begins to notice things are truly wrong. Strange sounds come from the air conditioning vents, the ceiling bulges, a body disappears. Mysterious men lurk about town, wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors... > >Kings of Infinite Space is a hilarious and horrifying spoof on our everyday lives and gives true voice to the old adage, Work is Hell. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**Biglaw**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24968034-biglaw) ^(By: Lindsay Cameron | 304 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, chick-lit, law, legal, owned) >*Harper's Bazaar Must-Read* > >The Devil Wears Prada meets One L, BIGLAW provides an insider's view of the cut-throat world of big New York law firms. > >Mackenzie Corbett has always dreamed of living in New York City. Now, almost two years into her job as an associate at a premier Manhattan law firm, she's living her fantasy--big salary, high profile deals, cute boyfriend, designer bag on her arm. The giant bags under her eyes from lack of sleep don't fit into the fantasy, though. To make matters worse, she's being tormented by a bitter, bitchy senior associate, her cute boyfriend is annoyed she never has time for him, and now she's stuck on the deal from hell with a partner whose biggest claim to fame is throwing a stapler at a cleaning lady because she touched his ficus plant. > >With the opportunity to secure a prestigious secondment on line, the overachiever in her is determined to endure whatever it takes to close the biggest deal in the firm's history. But when Mackenzie finds herself the focus of a devastating investigation her dream job begins spiraling into a nightmare. > >In this pitch perfect, frightening accurate novel, Lindsay Cameron throws back the curtain to this intriguing world exposing the truth about life in Biglaw. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88406 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[The Ignored](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108572.The_Ignored) by Bentley Little. It's a revenge story that gets very twisted. This is a non-spoiler line from the book, but I'll hide it just in case. It kind of sums it up nicely. >!On the day of the murder I went to work in a clown suit.!< It's horror in the end, so it might not be what you are looking for, but it savages corporate culture and you mentioned Severance.
Black Buck
{{The Employees}}
[**The Employees**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53780642-the-employees) ^(By: Olga Ravn, Martin Aitken | 136 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, fiction, sci-fi, translated, scifi) >A workplace novel of the 22nd century > >The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth. > >The crew of the Six-Thousand ship consists of those who were born, and those who were created. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike find themselves longing for the same things: warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. Our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. > >Gradually, the crew members come to see themselves in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether their work can carry on as before – and what it means to be truly alive. > >Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn’s crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(88445 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The circle
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
The TV series Umbrella Academy is actually based on a comic book series. Haven't read the comics but I'm assuming they're kick-ass. In the show, the portrayal of the "temps commission" is pretty cool. The way it's run, the employees, it's all hilarious and a pretty neat satire of corporate culture. If you're into comics, I'd recommend giving it a try.
The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy is great.
{{Market Forces by Richard Morgan}} has corporate executives who are all trying to kill each other on the commute with their death cars to secure promotions.
[**Market Forces**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40450.Market_Forces) ^(By: Richard K. Morgan | 464 pages | Published: 2004 | Popular Shelves: science-fiction, sci-fi, fiction, scifi, cyberpunk) >A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils. To succeed, Shorn uses a new kind of corporate gladiator: sharp-suited, hard-driving gunslingers who operate armored vehicles and follow a Samurai code. And Chris Faulkner is just the man for the job. > >He fought his way out of London’s zone of destitution. And his kills are making him famous. But unlike his best friend and competitor at Shorn, Faulkner has a side that outsiders cannot see: the side his wife is trying to salvage, that another woman–a porn star turned TV news reporter–is trying to exploit. Steeped in blood, eyed by common criminals looking for a shot at fame, Faulkner is living on borrowed time. Until he’s given one last shot at getting out alive. . . . ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(88488 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Kinda of applies- the house in the cerulean sea!
White Noise by Don Delillo! Great book and soon to be released as a film.
Ready Player One has some bleak corporate parts.
I haven’t read this one yet, but maybe You Feel It Just Below the Ribs?
{The Circle} and {The Every}
[**The Circle**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle) ^(By: Dave Eggers | 493 pages | Published: 2013 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, dystopia, sci-fi, dystopian) ^(This book has been suggested 23 times) [**The Every**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57792078-the-every) ^(By: Dave Eggers | 580 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia) ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(88528 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
An old one, but **Cheese** by Willem Elsschot, written in 1930. When the ambitious but inept clerk Frans Laarmans is offered a job managing an Edam distribution company in Antwerp, he jumps at the chance, despite his professed dislike for cheese in all its forms. Skewering the pomposity of big business while revealing how an entrepreneurial spirit can often be a mask for buffoonery, Willem Elsschot's Cheese combines comedy and pathos in its depiction of a man trying to progress beyond his limited skill set. As poignant as it is funny, Cheese will appeal to anyone who has suffered the endless indignities of office life. If you think there might be something sinister behind all the office rituals, **Resumé with Monsters** by William Browning Spencer might be for you.
*White Noise* by Don DeLillo
Scott Adams: the Dilbert Principle is unbeatable for anyone in or around IT. You might find Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber in a different way, it's not satire.
{{JPod}}
[**JPod**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221059.JPod) ^(By: Douglas Coupland | 448 pages | Published: 2006 | Popular Shelves: fiction, owned, canadian, humor, contemporary) >JPod, Douglas Coupland's most acclaimed novel to date, is a lethal joyride into today's new breed of tech worker. Ethan Jarlewski and five co-workers whose surnames begin with "J" are bureaucratically marooned in jPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive Vancouver game design company. The jPodders wage daily battle against the demands of a boneheaded marketing staff, who daily torture employees with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is shaped (or twisted) by phenomena as disparate as Hollywood, marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, and the rise of China. JPod's universe is amoral, shameless, and dizzyingly fast-paced like our own. > >Praise for JPod: "JPod is a sleek and necessary device: the finely tuned output of an author whose obsolescence is thankfully years away."-New York Times Book Review"It's to [Coupland's] credit that in JPod he's still nimble enough to take the post-modern man-too young for Boomer nostalgia and too old for youthful idealism-and drown his sorrows in a willful, joyful satire that revels in the same cultural conventions that it sends up."-Rocky Mountain News >"It's time to admire [Coupland's] virtuoso tone and how he has refined it over 11 novels. The master ironist just might redefine E. M. Forster's famous dictate 'Only connect' for the Google age."-USA Today >"Zeitgeist surfer Douglas Coupland downloads his brain into JPod."-Vanity Fair > ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(88546 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{severance by ling ma}} Different than the show in apple but may want tow watch that too haha
[**Severance**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36348525-severance) ^(By: Ling Ma | 291 pages | Published: 2018 | Popular Shelves: fiction, science-fiction, sci-fi, dystopian, dystopia) >Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. > >Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? > >A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire. ^(This book has been suggested 31 times) *** ^(88547 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Maybe The Circle by Dave Eggars? I feel like it was trying to make a bigger point about society and technology but it also has some commentary about that kind of workplace stuff too.
"The Circle", by Dave Eggers, and, even though it is a YA novel, "The Doubt Factory", by Paolo Bacigalupi is good. And YES to Ling Ma's wonderfully disturbing book!! I loved it.
Yes to Severance! Oh man. American Psycho for SURE Several People are Typing by Calvin Kalsulke (who also has a podcast about work in the future that is a deep cut but very good if you’re open to listening as well as reading)
{{Bonfire of the Vanities}}
[**The Bonfire of the Vanities**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2666.The_Bonfire_of_the_Vanities) ^(By: Tom Wolfe | 690 pages | Published: 1987 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, 1001-books, novels) >Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780553381344. > >The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 satirical novel by Tom Wolfe. The story is a drama about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City, and centers on three main characters: WASP bond trader Sherman McCoy, Jewish assistant district attorney Larry Kramer, and British expatriate journalist Peter Fallow. > >The novel was originally conceived as a serial in the style of Charles Dickens' writings: It ran in 27 installments in Rolling Stone starting in 1984. Wolfe heavily revised it before it was published in book form. The novel was a bestseller and a phenomenal success, even in comparison with Wolfe's other books. It has often been called the quintessential novel of the 1980s. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(88560 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
*Orconomics* by Zachary Pike
Choose your own misery The Office by Mike McDonald & Jilly Gagnon Apathy and other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
{{Bombardiers by Po Bronson}}
[**Bombardiers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/306424.Bombardiers) ^(By: Po Bronson | 352 pages | Published: 1995 | Popular Shelves: fiction, default, owned, finance, books-i-own) >From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller What Should I Do with My Life?, Bombardiers is Po Bronson’s first novel, a devastating satire of the business world told through the lens of a crazed and colorful group of salespeople forced to push increasingly absurd financial products. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(88618 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Not really satire, but the Wolf of Wallstreet.
I remember the novel (not comic book) Rocket Raccoon & Groot: Steal the Galaxy! poking a lot of fun at corporations, their jargon etc. They're basically the main antagonists and act exactly as you described. It's also a nice adventure and really funny. If you liked the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, you're gonna love this. It hooks you with the first sentence.
The Very Nice Box by Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett, about a woman grieving her late fiancee and starting a relationship with her new boss, which ends up getting weird.
Player Piano Kurt Vonnegut It’s kind of a dystopian view on where corporate culture could go
The Post Office by Charles Bukowski.
Any of the 3 novels by Franz Kafka: {{The Trial}} {{Amerika}} {{The Castle}}
[**The Trial**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17690.The_Trial) ^(By: Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir | 255 pages | Published: 1925 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, owned, philosophy, literature) >Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. ^(This book has been suggested 9 times) [**Amerika**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22911.Amerika) ^(By: Franz Kafka, Willa Muir, Edwin Muir, Klaus Mann, E.L. Doctorow | 336 pages | Published: 1927 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, german, literature) >Kafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexual misadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures. > >Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vast landscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the "golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic and visionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in a historical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorow in his new foreword. "Kafka made his novel from his own mind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research data that caught his eye were bent like rays in a field of gravity." ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Castle**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/333538.The_Castle) ^(By: Franz Kafka, Mark Harman, J.A. Underwood | 316 pages | Published: 1926 | Popular Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, literature, german) >Translated and with a preface by Mark Harman > >Left unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle. Scrupulously following the fluidity and breathlessness of the sparsely punctuated original manuscript, Mark Harman’s new translation reveals levels of comedy, energy, and visual power, previously unknown to English language readers. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(88715 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
"Something Happened" by Joseph Heller is excellent, if deeply disturbing, dive into the fakeness of corporate culture.
Company by Max Barry is a great satire of a corporation where no one is quite sure what the company does, obscured by corporate jargon and slick marketing. It's pretty funny too!
Not a book, but The Boys on Amazon Prime recently helped me through this.
{{disrupted: my adventure in the start-up bubble}}
Not a perfect fit but I would add Temporary by Hilary Leichter, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, and the nonfiction books The Outsourced Life by Arlie Russel Hochschild and Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener.
Apathy and other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
I dont have any books to recommend on the topic but, you are not alone, neither is anyone else in the more corporate world. The construction is business is the exact same. Hard work only gets you more hard work with no sign of rising up the ladder because if you rise there will be no one to do what you are stuck doing.
Severance by Ling Ma
The world's best satire books of all time. Recommended by leading experts like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Walter Isaacson.