Satirical book takes ‘a deep-dive into workplace bullsh*ttery’

Book: Wankernomics

Authors: James Schloeffel and Charles Firth

This book made me laugh hard.

I initially thought it was a funny take on a serious topic, but as I continued to read, which is one of this book’s strengths — the humour is engaging — I realised it was written purely for comic relief.

But what is it about you may ask?

Wankernomics is a satirical take on office jargon. When I was at college, some of the golden rules of writing that I was taught included: keep it simple, deconstruct jargon, avoid acronyms and don’t repeat things.

But nowadays, if someone sent an email saying “The purpose of this correspondence is to revert back on the KPIs discussion for the purposes of moving forward on key agreements”, not only does it break every one of the golden rules above, but it also probably sounds remarkably familiar to something you probably read, or someone said, recently.

READ ALSO: A mother like no other: a fierce, funny memoir

And that is the essence of the book, it pokes hilarious fun at stupid, modern office phrases which try to sound clever but essentially mean very little.

Who would enjoy this book?

Gen Xers and Boomers (if any of them are not yet retired) who find millennial and Gen Z language hard to understand or extremely funny. Yes, I am aware that that sentence is full of wankernomic phrases, which brings me to my next point …

My thoughts on this book

It hit home a little painfully, as good satire should. Some of the modern office phrases used to pad conversation or emails have become so day-to-day that I cringed at how guilty I had become of using them myself, despite having been so thoroughly schooled on golden rules.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this book because anything in my opinion that makes me laugh as hard as this did is worth the paper it is printed on.

Sampler

The book opens with: “For American readers. While Australian and British readers will be familiar with the term ‘wanker’, for our North American readers an explanation may be required.

“Imagine someone who lacks self-awareness, vastly overestimates how interested strangers are in their work, and whose self-confidence significantly outstrips their abilities. Sorry, you live in America — that’s not helping you narrow it down is it?

“Okay, imagine that guy in your workplace — let’s call him Chad — who uses words like ‘circle back’ and ‘synergise’, and wants to ‘quickly jump on a call to ideate some killer strategies’ before his ‘hard stop’ at 3.30pm, and says sorry he has to ‘take this call’ because he’s ‘closing an important deal’. He’s a wanker.”