Because You're Worth It

When did you last read a novel that properly described your real working world? Of course you could say when did you last want to read a novel about the fear, loathing and black comedy of the weekly grind. But when most of us spend too much of our waking (and non-waking) life at the corporate coalface, it’s odd that so few novels ever truly hit the spot.

Of course by ‘real working world’ I think we mean the kind of jobs most of us have that we’d prefer not to talk about outside our cubicle. If you’ve ever sat next to a knowledge manager at a dinner party you’ll know the problem. It’s interesting that when novelists deign to dip their toes into our murky world they always seem to make a bee-line for the glam or semi-glam occupation. Thus we had Bridget Jones as a TV researcher, a recent Marion Keyes heroine was a wedding organiser, while Jenny Turner’s The Brain Storm was set in a broadsheet newspaper office and Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End takes place in an ad agency.

It’s interesting that the first two characters are semi-peripatetic (ie don’t have to sit with dribbling colleagues in too many evening meetings) while the others probably have more autonomy than the rest of us. It has to be said that Turner and Ferris would claim to be offering a more serious examination of workplace culture. But while The Brain Storm certainly has its iconic office moments reading Then We Came to the End is quite like being stuck in an office on an endless Tuesday afternoon and thinking for this you had essay crises at university.

Perhaps The Office TV series has just raised the bar so high that no one can possibly come near it. Or perhaps the workplace is just too depressing or complex for most contemporary writers to deal with. It’s also probably the case that many writers just don’t have that kind of ‘hey, I’m going to be spending forty years of my life wondering what a quality circle is in a size-restricted work space surrounded by people who watch Bargain Hunt’ experience of most of us.

It’s hardly surprising then how often writers get things wrong when they dip their toes into our naff world. Tim Lott, for example, referred to ‘typing pools’ in a recent book and we all know these went out with Lucky Strikes. Rachel Cusk’s drippy temp in The Temporary wouldn’t have lasted a minute in a real office. Editors, who’ve probably gone straight from college into the media and publishing, often don’t get it either. An editor at Metro just couldn’t believe such a thing as a learning log existed. As someone who had to fill one in for an entire year to satisfy an obsessive line manager I had to assure her they unfortunately did.

The Great American Novel. The Richard and Judy Novel. Sorry, some of us are still waiting for the Great Have You Stolen My Stapler Novel.