Please Be Advised
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Please Be Advised is award-winning author Christine Sneed's bright, irreverent send-up of corporate America in the 21st century. Mixing cultural critique and formal inventiveness with wicked laughs and the sort of surrealistic mysteries only a novel about the corporate world could give us, Please Be Advised tracks the decline, fall, and possible resurrection of Quest Industries, one of the world's foremost purveyors of collapsible, portable, and (occasionally) dangerous office machines. Featuring a rogue's gallery of corporate cogs from drunk, womanizing, and often-delusional CEO Bryan Stokerly, Esq. to his executive secretary, the brainy, libidinous Hannah Louise Schmidt and his soon-to-be-rival, new office manager and disgraced former coroner, Dr. Ken Crickshaw, Jr., Please Be Advised will leave you laughing at a work world more like our own than most of us would care to admit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sneed's perplexing satire in memos (after the collection The Virginity of Famous Men) runs on workplace drama at an office supplies manufacturer. Each memo convincingly apes the corporate voice of interoffice emails, with the added touch of highly personal details such as accounts of employees' sex lives. Dr. Ken Crickshaw, the new office manager (formerly a county coroner), slowly becomes the designated rival of Bryan Stokerly, Esq., the company president. Meanwhile, an IRS audit is afoot, and Ken has designated himself the company matchmaker. For whatever reason, the first lucky couple is expected to send periodic dispatches regarding their relationship to the entire staff. In addition, employees are encouraged to take frequent wellness surveys. As each share their "Story of Personal Triumph," the reader senses the author padding the manuscript with manufactured character development. When a recall of the company's "collapsible paper cutter" causes financial trouble, everyone's secrets begin to come out. Sneed nails the relentless falsity of corporate jargon and company creeds, but not for any clear purpose. Readers may very well put in their notice before this is over.
