4 out of 5 Hoagies
Published 2026-09-12
tag(s): #books #reviews
Lately I am in a bit of an anti-review mood, which makes it funny that I am writing one.
To be fair, one of the things that causes the dislike are highly emotional (maybe a more
accurate word would be, "reactive") reviews, published right after the reviewer is
done with the item in question. And this is not one of those cases.
I checked out this book from the Secaucus library back in February.
Will I remember all the details about it now? No, of course not. But instead I can offer what
stayed with me about it long term. I am starting to think those impressions are more valuable.
I saw the book on a display, the title piqued my interest because "how I began to suspect
capitalism is a joke" is very much in vogue for 2026.
Then I picked it up and found out it wasn't quite a manifesto about how unsustainable
capitalism is (although it certainly touches on that topic) but a bit of a memoir about how
ridiculous corporate life can be. And guess what, that topic is dear to my heart too...
The author lands a job at a consulting firm right before Y2K, and ends up assigned to a
marketing company.
Now, Leigh isn't a software developer, and she undersells how bad Y2K could have been...Or
maybe not. We don't know. There's a universe where we didn't spend a gazillion man-hours of
programmers to avoid a catastrophe, and we have no clue if in that universe the world really
did go down the drain on January 2000.
But what it is certain is that regardless of nuclear reactors blowing up or (even worse) banks paying double interest rate on a savings account, a marketing firm not fulfilling their contracts airing commercials should be really low in the priority list of Y2K-ToDo.
Yet that is Leigh's main area of concern.
There's familiarity in her journey: joining the corporate world and seeing days as a series of ridiculous rituals, and over time starting to truly believe in "The Process". To finally reaching a level of enlightenment where you accept that things are the way they are sometimes for good reasons, but most times (by far) for no good reason other than "that's just how it is".
I related to the cast of characters in the book so much. I've seen them all: the one that
spends all their working hours doing personal stuff, the True Believer of the Corporate
Mission, and the one that landed a position completely unprepared for it. Strict
"leaders" that rarely show up on the floor and instill respect (fear?) in the hearts
of their teams.
The fact that I've played some of these roles at different times in my life does not escape
me.
I've seen some comments on review websites that accuse the book of using complicated prose, or
having too many references to other works.
On the latter, I will say that I did have to look up a few things, but I never felt it was
overdone, or a reference for the sake of it. I learned about a thing or two, yay!
On the complexity charges, I would agree that the book has sentences that run long. But at
least to me, it never felt like a drag.
Quite the opposite, the author's voice when conveying these stories makes them all the more
entertaining. It is very tongue in cheek, but with a coat of "outsider's view" that I
think adds a lot of value to her observations. And she chooses the perfect time in the
timeline to digress on the ridiculousness of what's going on around her.
If you ever found yourself in a meeting room, looking around and wondering which decisions in your life took you to a place of such ritualistic theatricals, you will probably like this book.
4 out of 5 Hoagies