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The Management Secrets of T. John Dick
In fact, the resemblance to Dilbert is confined to the setting (a dysfunctional company) and a general atmosphere of corporate absurdity that will be only too familiar to many of us. This is a novel which is closer in tone to British humor of the 1950s. For 268 pages we go inside the head of T. John Dick, a hopelessly incompetent but supremely self-confident marketing manager, transferred from Boston to a small company in the fictitious town of Falling Rock, North Carolina.
Dick immediately goes about licking the company into shape, with disastrous and frequently hilarious results.
The humor derives chiefly from the character of TJ himself and the stark contrast between his self-image and reality. In his mind, he is a dynamic leader in tune with the latest management techniques. He is fond of sharing with us some of his "greatest strengths," including his ability to see "the big picture." In reality, he is a bumbling nincompoop, obsessed with petty details like the tidiness of his employees' desks and his mind-numbingly complex Meeting Room Reservation Procedure, the constant flouting of which drives him to distraction. He is completely unaware of the source of amusement he provides for his colleagues, particularly his nemesis, the laconic VP of Finance, and Hans Kartoffel, the German acting President of the group.
TJ applies the same cutting edge management techniques to his marriage, with similar results. He is completely oblivious to his wife's frequent affairs. We would feel sorry for him, if he weren't such a jerk. In fact, we do occasionally find ourselves sympathizing with him, but we soon get over it.
TJ's unusual management style leads him into some unique (and very funny) situations. His arrangements for a celebration of two million accident-free work hours lead to a fire which burns down half the factory. He attempts to struggle through a violent attack of diarrhea during an important presentation. He accidentally locks the company's president in a restroom stall and endeavors to free him without being noticed. So accident-prone is he that we are hardly surprised when his golf pants catch fire. Of course, no matter what happens, TJ always has a perfectly rational explanation - and it's never his fault.
The character of TJ is an exaggerated but nonetheless very recognizable version of bosses we have known. I laughed, but I also squirmed at the thought that there is no shortage of TJs running around gumming up the gears of industry. The book will appeal to anyone, engineer, product manager, secretary or other corporate wage slave, who has ever had to deal with an incompetent boss or colleague.
The Management Secrets of T. John Dick concludes with a series of completely absurd topics for readers discussion groups. My favorite: "TJ's obsession with trivial details....might be described as a serious personality defect. Discuss some of your own personality defects. Bet you've got some real doozies! You might like to help your co-members by pointing out some of theirs."
The book's back cover reveals little about its author, Augustus Gump, so I turned to the publisher's web site www.mainlandpress.com. Gump has previously published a number of short stories and his humorous articles have appeared in the Charlotte Observer and other regional newspapers. This is his first novel. I will be looking out for his next one.
You (or your boss) can purchase The Management Secrets of T. John Dick from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
little challenge at the end of the review to explain my own failings.
1. I usually don't bother to care what I seem like to others; Instead, I concentrate on my goals and not much else.
2. I should pay attention to detail with the rest of life too, not just the contents of my hard drives.
Conclusion: I'm gonna buy this one, because it seems to provoke thought as well as laughter.
C|N>K
And this book review is of interest to nerds WHY EXACTLY? The reviewer makes a comparison to the lead character of this novel and a supporting character in a technology-based cartoon and that's enough to get this accepted on slashdot? WTF? This book has nothing to do with technology or nerds or anything that nerds care about! This has about as much relevance on slashdot as Martha Stewart's latest "Cooking Simplistic Crap For the Masses" book.
Engineers deal with business too. Do you think that every geek/nerd sits in a cube all day, working on crap, and never has to manage? Please, don't feed me that.
It has a LOT to do with nerds. Some day your parents will demand that you work for a living, and then you'll see.
Are you reading the same Dilbert? The one where Wally is a lazy good-for-no-work coffee drinker? Where Alice is frequently violent to fellow co-workers? The one where Dilbert causes most of his own misfortune when the PHB isn't involved?
The entire company is disfunctional. If they were godlike in skills, they wouldn't be working there. A recent comic even had Dilbert noticing that he wasn't even qualified for his own job any more.
Incompetence has _never_ been limited just to the PHB, nor just to the people who read those damned management books.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
and "anecdotes illustrating his theory that the business world is inhabited almost exclusively by knuckleheads."
For the "The most disastrous business decision you ever witnessed" I would have to say IBM's decision to license DOS from Microsoft. Either that, or the current deathwish that SCO has against IBM and the computing industry in general.
"The most ridiculous presentation you ever heard": Hasn't Mr. Gump seen, or even heard, of the conference where Balmer comes onstage, jumps around, and screams "DEVELOPERS!" repeatedly at the top of his lungs? I found that hilarious.
Those should definitely make it into the next book.
I think you are referring to irony, but one wouldn't know so from your post:
irony, n - Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: "Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated" (Richard Kain).
Your statements just describe things that suck, not things that are ironic. Please, base your definitions of words on actual reading, not music, because apparently musicians are just as illiterate as the rest of America. It's crappy when it rains on your wedding day, but it's ironic if it happens after you chide all your friends for not preparing for rain on their wedding days yet you yourself don't prepare for it on your day. It's lame when you've got lots of spoons but need a knife, it's ironic when you've been slowly trading knives for spoons and you never actually need a knife until you run out of them.
My favorite, most poignant story of irony is a racist skinhead who decided he couldn't stay in any longer. When he informed the rest of the skinheads, they beat him up and left him almost unconscious on the side of the road. Multiple white people passed him by and did not help him, and finally a black couple saw him and helped him. See, that's irony, not just crappy
Please, read more, music less
.