Hardcover, 256 pages
Published Sept. 7, 2021 by Doubleday.
A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF.
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 …
A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF.
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.
3, 3.5 stars. This was a breeze to read and an entertaining time. I found the slack chatter very believable, which was probably harder to pull off than it seems!
A hilarious read of its time, stuck between COVID, wfh & always-online Slack-based work
This is the funniest book I've ever read. If you spend any work time on Slack (or just on the internet in general), it's worth a read. I laughed out loud, something I never do when reading.
Lowkey afraid of Slackbot now
Basically brilliant
A modern variation on the epistolary novel. The voices are very authentic, the plot scary and funny and wild. A very quick read, but recommended!
This book was LOL funny at parts, and I liked that the entire thing was written as a series of Slack messages. Kasulke did a good job capturing the ridiculousness of workplace conversation (both on topic and off) and the nuances of inside jokes and emojis. That alone could be enough to make an enjoyable reading experience, but he goes beyond that as this book tackles some bigger/existential questions, such as, "what does it mean to have a body?" and "where's the line between our physical and virtual presences?"
Would definitely read more by this original author.
