 |
After Rick Gaines loses his job in human resources because of computer wizard Binny's inappropriate joke, Rick begins a journey into the wild world of unemployment. As he navigates the job market and faces the realization that he may not find another position, he reluctantly accepts Binny's offer to rob a bank white collar-style using Binny's disturbingly genius computer skills. The computer Binny uses belongs to a bank consultant. The bank consultant donates the computer to a local elementary school, where it finds a home in the classroom of Sara Simpson, a woman reminiscent of RED's Sarah Ross. Riddled with guilt that Sara has inadvertently become a scapegoat for his and Binny's crime, Rick works to clear her name, but he doesn't lose sight of his goal to never again return to the corporate realm.
While this book delights readers with its edgy humor, unique plot, and comical dialogue, it ultimately portrays a realm of corporate-realm rejects—those whose otherness and intelligence places them at the fringes of any office environment, even the most tolerant ones. Characters like Rick and Binny, both nonconformists in sheeps' business suits, introduce readers to the flaws and plagues corporatism has to inflict on the individualist. At first, readers will think Rick is a man dedicated to his job and the corporation that employs him. However, as readers navigate with Rick the emotional onslaught that corporate bureaucracy, office politics, and their aftermath have to offer him, readers learn that Rick is a person who values one thing—personal freedom.
Rick's breaking away from the corporate world and his entrance into the liberty that breaking free offers him reminds readers of how much American workers become dominated by their careers and work lives. With no time, no space, no opportunity to explore their identities and talents in a capacity beyond defined job expectations, workers become dehumanized. Throughout the novel, Rick, in an attempt to rediscover who he actually is, dabbles with fake identities as he embarks on his post-corporate life of crime. As he experiments with each identity, he repeats what eventually becomes his mantra—"I'm good at this." Rick's ability to recognize this aptitude of inventing new personas and acting in them in an espionage-like manner is a huge moment of self-awareness. Rick becomes a likable character, an unlikely Robin Hood of sorts, as he becomes a hero to anyone who's gone to great (but hopefully not illegal) lengths to conquer the corporate grindstone and preserve their selfhood in the face of nine-to-five monotony.
Readers who are fans of TV shows like Dead Like Me, which play on the stereotypes and tropes of office culture, will appreciate this book. Readers who enjoy works where the outliers and the downtrodden become the quirky but ultimate heroes will also appreciate it. This novel portrays humor in the most unlikely situations, such as an elementary school student accidentally alerting the Fed via one click of a mouse after typing "Miss Simpson smells." Nonetheless, the book's ultimate offering to readers, particularly readers fed up with the demands of corporate culture, is the philosophical conversation about talents: how each person possesses them, and how businesses may use these talented people, abuse them, exploit them, and, ultimately, ignore or fire them.