Product Description

This book does for the office what "Never Hit a Jellyfish With A Spade" did for the rest of life. It lets you into all the little secrets, tips and rules for surviving the office jungle. "Office Politics" explains in detail all the many reasons why you prefer lying under your duvet to sitting at your desk. In the book you'll learn all about: bosses from hell, with egos even larger than their company cars; how office pot plants survive on a diet of cold coffee and furniture polish; how to avoid responsibility for work, pass the buck and take the credit all at the same time; what your favourite sandwich fillings say about you as a person; and tell-tale signs of office affairs and what to do if you think you might be having one. "Office Politics" makes sense of all the things in office life that make no sense at all. So fill out your purchase order form, cancel all meetings and settle back for a read that's almost as hilarious as the MD's dancing at the Christmas party.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106159 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From the Publisher
A witty and enlightening look at the joys of office life by the bestselling humorist

About the Author
Guy Browning writes the How to... column in The Guardian's Weekend magazine. He is also a business consultant specialising in creativity. He lives quietly in Oxfordshire. In addition to his two volumes of How To... columns, Guy is the author of Weak at the Top - the adventures of his management monster John Weak. Weak was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2005 and has been commissioned for a second series.

Customer Reviews

Packed with Funniness
Earlier this year I listened to an audiobook extract of Guy Browning's Never Hit a Jellyfish - I was amazed at how well it worked. As one American reviewer put it, `Almost every single sentence is packed with funniness.'

I sat down to read Office Politics. It's the same format as Jellyfish- short articles on specific aspects of business life - which you can read from first to last, last to first, or just dip in to when you're on the Tube. Each one has a pearl of laconic wisdom:

`Bosses often confuse giving dictation with being a dictator.'

`Men like nothing better than what they call a "titanic boardroom struggle on fundamental strategy". Women have a more accurate term for this sort of behaviour, "willy waving".'

`Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said your only asset was your people you would end up living in a tent.'

This book is great fun. `Onwards and downwards' as Mr Browning might say.

Truly funny observations on office life
If you've ever had anything to do with an office, then you are going to laugh if you pick up this book. From the first sentence you read, you'll find the absolute truth expressed with great wit. Browning has a dry sense of humour and a pithy style which makes the book great to dip in and out of. Having said that I started at the beginning and couldn't stop til the end.
There are many funny observations on the business side of the office such as `Mission statements are the business equivalent of writing a letter to Santa Claus.' And `All sales people have targets. Mostly confused elderly people who can be persuaded to...' but the book is actually packed with the social behaviour of the office population and people's habits etc in the office too. One that amused my colleagues particularly was `There are rare instances where men with beards succeed in business, but however well they do it's impossible to shake the suspicion that somewhere deep in their wardrobe lurks a pair of sandals.' (Obviously our boss is bearded).
How true that `Every woman has something odd in her handbag that, should she suddenly be buried by an erupting volcano would give archaeologists a thousand years from now cause for endless speculation and debate.'
Bury this in your handbook and it'll be a fascinating snapshot of 21st century life for ever more.

Nothing I Didn't Know Already
As for other reviewers, my aim with this book was to provide some lighthearted entertainment over the Xmas period.

Each Chapter is short and anecdotal, but I am afraid this book did not entertain as much as it could. I would be interested in how much time the author has been in a "real" office setting.

There are the obvious issues raised, but there is much more mileage in the more subtle stuff that goes on in an office and the informal social structures that get set up, which when observed provide enormous amounts of material.

Unfortunately too lightweight for me; something that anyone working in an office could have produced.