If you’re in the mood for a snarky critique of Capitalism, Leigh Claire La Berge’s Fake Work will tickle your Funny Bone. La Berge writes about her time working for a consulting company where the work was “fake”–like producing spreadsheets that were sent to the company archives never to be seen again. After La Berge gets a promotion, she finds herself jet-setting on the firm’s dime to thirty-minute lunch meetings in Johannesburg.
My favorite story in Fake Work was when La Berge gave impromptu lectures to Japanese executives about limiting liability at the end of the world. The end of the work world As We Know It is approaching as Artificial Intelligence is causing massive layoffs of white collar workers. I feel sorry for College Students now attempting to find work in a world where AI will be performing the tasks of an entry level worker.
Is Capitalism a joke? We’re about to find out in the next couple of years as the impact of technology transforms the workplace. I was reading about the current projects to convert New York City office space into luxury apartments because so many workers in NYC now work from home. I’m afraid “Fake Work” will soon become “No Work.” GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Prologue: The Almost End of the World — vii
Phase I: Taking Inventory — 1
Chapter 1: Millennial Transitions — 3
Chapter 2: Quality Assurance — 16
Chapter 3: “Il n’y a pas de hors-texte” — 28
Chapter 4: Write What You Know — 43
Chapter 5: Teamwork — 58
Phase II: Media and Mediations — 75
Chapter 6: My Putative Promotion — 77
Chapter 7: A Total Bitch and an Absolute Fraud — 94
Chapter 8: A Tepid Marxist and a Bubble Popped — 108
Chapter 9: My Joke of a Promotion — 123
Phase III: Contingency Planning — 143
Chapter 10: Continental Comportment — 145
Chapter 11: Frequent Fliers — 160
Chapter 12: Floods and Fires — 179
Chapter 13: The End of the End — 191
Afterward: Weeks and Decades — 203
Acknowledgements –209
NOTES — 211
