Q: Which books can show me how to protect myself from toxic colleagues?
D, Hong Kong
Sam Leith, literary editor of the Spectator and author of Write to the Point: How to Be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page, writes:
Toxic colleagues are the worst. But they may be a feature of the workplace environment rather than a bug. I would suggest nonfiction for diagnosis and fiction for cure. Nikil Saval’s book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace is full of enlightening material on why offices are like they are and why management tend to be idiots. Oliver James’s Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks zeroes in on the toxic colleagues themselves. If you don’t mind a bit of pop-psych chin-stroking, you’ll enjoy how he helps you spot the “dark triad” of malignant qualities in Debbie from HR.
Fiction-wise, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris captures well the monotony of office life – and, through its being told in the first-person plural, offers a consoling solidarity. Another fine chronicler of office life, of a slightly earlier generation, is Douglas Coupland. The quality control on Coupland’s work can be uneven, but 1995’s Microserfs is, to my mind, a stone-cold classic, and JPod, which covered similar territory a decade or so later, is silly but often fun.
Finally, there is the existential nuclear option. Herman Melville’s immortal short story Bartleby the Scrivener tells the tale of a lowly clerk who decides, politely, that enough is enough. So the next time your toxic colleague asks you to do some photocopying you should answer, with Bartleby: “I would prefer not to.”
Submit your question for Book Clinic below or email bookclinic@observer.co.uk
