Comments on: Revolutionary Road — Corporate Desperation, 1950’s Style

By: Despite recession, it might be time to move on | Cube Rules

Despite recession, it might be time to move on | Cube Rules — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:01:17 +0000

[...] down with layoffs doesn’t mean you should cling to what you have at all costs. Because there are costs. Costs like not wanting to go to work on Monday. Putting up with a disgusting manager who will [...]

By: vera babayeva

vera babayeva — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:59:53 +0000

wow, very well written and very well said. Great post. I saw the movie and was touched by it. While I related to it more from the relationship side, you know the married life and Frank getting his wife pregnant to succumb her dreams, etc.

I love that movie and plan on reading the book.

By: Carrie

Carrie — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:45:21 +0000

This is my favorite book of all time. When I first read it several years ago, I was shocked at how current it still felt even though it was written in 1961. Some things never change.

Edwina, read it! It’s beautifully written and has a touch dark humor. If you identify with Frank and April, consider it a more desirable wake up call than a heart attack.

By: Edwina

Edwina — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:06:41 +0000

I want to read this book and I don’t want to read this book. I’m afraid I will identify too well with Frank and April. Scratch that – I KNOW I will. It’s like a prisoner reading a book about incarceration.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:42:56 +0000

That’s really interesting, Mark. I have done some research on “Corporate Japan,” but have not had the opportunity to spend time in Japanese corporate offices. I would love to learn more about how Japanese workers feel about their “bright, dry, daily ordeal.”

By: Mark McClure

Mark McClure — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:01:28 +0000

Pam – 1950s, Wow!
That seems a frighteningly real description of some current corp office environments too?

“It was his bright, dry, daily ordeal, his personal measure of tedium. It had taught him new ways of spacing out the hours of the day — almost time to go down for coffee; almost time to go out for lunch; almost time to go home — and he had come to rely on these desolate wastes of time between pleasures as an invalid comes to rely on the certainty of recurring pain.”

I wonder what he’d make of the Japanese offices for foreign corps where the cubicle partitions are but waist high? I preferred those because I could actually see real people.

In many ordinary Japanese companies (that I know of), the cubes don’t exist and staff sit side by side in joined together rows of desks. Kind of like school in a way.

Bosses are in rows with their backs to the windows. There’s both a dictatorial and a homely, we’re all a clan feel to such a layout. No hiding out of sight, that’s for sure.