Product Description

Tired of reading about the habits of highly effective managers? Given up trying to accomplish anything in one minute? Don't care who moved your cheese? Here's the antidote to management books. Learn the real way to make friends, influence people and achieve you career goals: The Way Of The Rat.

With caustic wit, black humour and uncanny insight, the author takes you down into the sewer to explore the dark and devious rituals of business today. He shines a light into corners of the office that most companies would prefer to ignore - places where jealousy, cruelty, anger, hate and revenge lurk. How can you subvert your boss? Exploit your colleagues' weaknesses? Come out on top? It's easier than you think. Be ruthless; be a rat.

Don't be fooled by talk of empowerment, teamwork or corporate values. Office politics isn't like that. It's about power: how you can get it and how you use it. The Way Of The Rat tackles the subject with refreshing honesty, and no small dose of cynicism. Read it - but don't leave it lying on your desk.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #134354 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Management Today (June 2004)
"I strongly recommend this book... It's not only extremely perceptive of human behaviour at work, but also fun to read."

The Daily Telegraph (13 July 2004)
"Schrijvers book speaks frankly, and with an admirable lack of motivational nonsense, about the real dynamics of business success."

The Times (July 13, 2004)
"What runaway hit The Rules did for romance, Way Of The Rat promises to do same for the work world."

Customer Reviews

Boring and useless
I bought this book due to very high recommendations from a colleague who found this book changed their outlook re the workplace and helped them progress upwards - which I now find tragic. Here's why-
(1) The author makes several assumptions which in my experience are generally made by arrogant ambitious egomaniacs in modern workplaces. These include, amongst many others -
(a) That the true measures of your self worth are your place in the corporate hierarchy and the 'power' you wield over others. (This is laughable and tragic for people like the author - whose definition of job satisfaction will recursively include place in hierarchy and the power you wield.) Having fun involves wielding this power over others.
(b) That everyone around them is as ambitious, scheming, and sub-human as they themselves are (and those who aren't are clearly 'losers' who deserve to be climbed on)
(c) That "winning" is everything which is a zero-sum game (if you don't it to someone, they'll do it to you; and that there can be only one winner) - with arrogant ambitious people's corollary "...therefore whatever you do to others is justified"
(d) And that to any of the above assumptions, you must not ask the question "why" - because achievers don't and "what else is there anyway?"

(2) The writing is tedious and repetitive (required to turn something with such little substance into a book).

(3) While the imagery used - rats, sewers, drains etc. - is intended to shock you to focus, after a while it is boring and makes you pity someone whose first thought in the morning is to go to the sewer and fight for the next morsel!

To be fair, clearly this will resonate well in many modern high-paying workplaces, esp. investment banking, trading floors, management consulting, real estate agents and the like - and most of the successful ones found in such places already know the tricks to win in the sewer. In my experience, however, it is far more rewarding and fulfilling to think for yourself what you want from your worklife, and if that doesn't involve becoming the alpha-pest then don't bother learning how to become one!
The utility of this book - yes it has one - is to enlighten you as to the game some of the others might be playing (esp. those inevitable ones who'd have turned the space around themselves into a sewer) and, therefore, how not to be dragged into the filth. As a guideline to the workings of groups in modern workplaces, this can be a somewhat useful book - but then if you need a book of this sort, perhaps you don't need one!

Couldn't get through the entire book and had to junk it. Not worth the time.

Cyncial but true to life
Whilst not the most fluent prose it contains some useful insights - not least that politcs is inevitable so you might as well enjoy it. The anecdotes add some colour and humour.