Customer Reviews

Economy of Errors: SatireWire Gives Business the Business

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

From what I've seen and read lately, there are two big guns in news satire or humorous news: The Onion and SatireWire. I own all three Onion books, (one and three were great, the second one was funny, but kind of slapped together), and bought Economy of Errors the other day, hoping it was just as good as their rival's. That's a tall order for anyone's first book, but especially after I learned SatireWire was not a "they," but just one guy.

So, I got the book, flipped to a random page, "Girlfriend Announces Disappointing Q2 Results," and after about 30 seconds I was doubled over. My roommate came over, and all I could say was "Read this! Read this!" before spluttering off for some water. Since then we've been fighting over it.

What I love about it is not just that it's hilarious, but it skewers something that never really gets hit hard enough: business. Okay, lately people have been making fun of Enron and Andersen and a few others, but this book digs at everybody from Microsoft to Adam Smith to the hidden desires of CEOs (the story about CEO dream dates is classic, maybe even beyond classic). More amazing to me is that it's both hysterical and historical, it kind of walks you through the new economy right thru to today's post-new economy.

Today, because I just read it, my favorite is one that takes on high-tech hype. Called "IBM Has Smaller Chips; AMD Has Smaller Employees," it begins: "In response to IBM's statement that it will produce transistors only .20 microns across, rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices announced today that most of its employees are no more than 14 inches tall. AMD, however, refused to allow reporters into its facilities to verify the claim. "We would, but we can't reach the doorknobs," spokesman Ravi Chalani said in a phone interview."

The Onion guys are great, but as I'm reading this, I'd have to say Andrew Marlatt is the funniest writer in America.

I'm giving this baby five stars, but I should say it's probably not for people over, say, age 60 who don't know or haven't followed much the world of business in the last 10 years. For everyone else, this book is an absolute classic, and probably the funniest thing I have read in years.

I've read a few places where people say Economy of Errors is funnier than Dilbert, but it's not like Dilbert at all. Dilbert is a one-off running joke. This book has a little of everything: funny images, funny illustrations, and hundreds of stories that quite literally have had people around the office fighting over it. (Yes, even to take to the bathroom.)

Certainly it's Onionesque in parts, with some great headlines ("Survey: Majority Of Web Users Are FBI Agents Posing As Teenage Girls"), but it's much more in-depth, and more memorable because of it. I will never forget reading about "employee slapping" policies, or how Toys R Us, long known for its distinctive backwards R, decided to turn around its T and its U as well to get three times the brand recognition.

My only advice is, don't loan the book out. Make people get their own.

I was surprised when I read this because I really thought The Onion was the only place that did this kind of thing. But this book is great. The style is different, much more featurey in some parts, and almost Pythonesque in others.

It's also different in that while the headlines themselves are funny, e.g., "Chrysler Recalls Ford Minivans" or "Shooting at Virtual Office Leaves 3 As Good As Dead, 6 Tantamount to Wounded"), the stories get even funnier as they go on. And while it's absurd, it's definitely a history of the New Economy with stories about the beginnings of Netscape, the mad dotcom rush, the horrible fall from grace (including a story about refugee camps set up for dotcommers where the refs from AltaVista turned out to be particularly useless: "We sent them out for sticks to make a fire, and they came back with Thai sticks, Stickley furniture, and Old Styx albums.")

I know these guys (Satirewire) have a web site, but their stuff was made for print. It's just hysterically funny stuff.

I got this book because somebody at work kept talking and laughing about it, so I had to see for myself. I hadn't heard of the author, or his site, Satirewire. But, and I mean this, wow. This book is just great.

I'm trying to think of parallels for Economy of Errors, and while parts are like the Onion, other parts are like Monty Python, and other parts (particularly some of the charts, like "Job Performance as a Percentage of Cheese" or "Should Marty Xerox Egypt?") are like nothing else I've ever seen or read. One thing is I can say: Economy of Errors turns business and technology on its head, and does it in a way that's really accessible to pretty much anyone. Well, almost anyone.

To really "get" some of the pieces, such as one ("Unfinished Is Good for Business") that talks about how Ford starting sending out unfinished cars so "end users" could find the bugs, it would help if you were familiar with how software companies send out "beta" versions and let users help find the bugs. But most of the book is hilarious even if you aren't completely versed in business. Even if you don't know that companies often send executives on team building retreats where they all are faced with some challenge, like climbing a mountain together, the story "Swimming with the Sharks" (executives "grow together" by spending 48 hours in the Pacific fending off shark attacks using pencils) will have you on the floor.

There are I don't know how many great stories in here, but overall, I'd have to say I never realized business could be so incredibly funny.

This is hands-down the funniest business book I've ever read, (and that includes Jack Welch's autobiography ;-)

A dead-on parody of big silly business, of which I am, sadly, a part, it has something for everyone: quick little shorts that had me rolling, absurdly funny charts and graphs, and longer features like the "adventure metaphor" called "Swimming with the Sharks" -- which tells the story of a group of execs who go on a team-building excursion that requires them to spend 48 hours swimming in a great white shark feeding ground. Outstanding.

Overall, just excellent.

This book is flat-out hysterical. It's got hundreds of stories and charts, and it's somewhat of a history of the last 10 years or so of business and technology, (from 1994 thru 2002). Some of the tech-related stories are the best, like the one about how Foot and Mouth disease is the only major virus that Microsoft's outlook can't propagate. But I also love the one about how loyal employees are very rare nowadays, and therefore can be sold for good money to other companies, or the Jewish mother who's mad that her son never visits her Web site anymore. Literally had me howling.

It's very well laid-out, essentially a magazine in book form, and reminds me of the first Onion book, except it's more specific and a bit more intelligent. I imagine this will be a big winner at Christmastime.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will state that I opened this book expecting to be disappointed. I have read SatireWire for some time, and it's great, but I thought the premise of this book -- this faux history of the new economy -- was asking for trouble. I was only slightly right. A few of the stories didn't work for me. They would have been very funny if I read them closer to when some of the events happened, but time and distance tempers the joke for me. However, with the vast majority of the several hundred stories here, the author has managed to transcend time and place. This is just very, very funny writing, and some of these "business" stories, such as about employee slapping, the Fed "policy rave," or selling off your most loyal employees, will be funny 50 years from now.

That said, I'd still like to see what the author could do with a more timeless subject.

I was laughing from page one, but it was the Employee Slapping story (pp. 31-32) that made me realize this was no ordinary book. The premise: During the late 1990s, the labor market was tight and employees got to make absurd demands on employers for flex time and stock options and the like. In real life, as in the story, this caused stress in the workplace for some managers or long-timers who resented the concessions new hires were getting. So Marlatt has companies institute "employee slapping policies" where you can slap anyone under you any time you want and, as the story says, 'literally feel the tension fly right off your fingertips." Better yet, the policies are motivational. You want a promotion, not for the money, but because you get to slap more people beneath you and have fewer people above you who get to slap you. As one guy says, "Right now, in my department, I've got six people under me. That's only six people I can slap. My boss, he has 96 people under him. I want his job."

The book is spilling over with stories like that, and most of them are pretty short. It's a great beach read, if you don't mind laughing out loud in public.

As the title says, I couldn't put this book down... P>Economy of Errors takes everything you've ever thought about business and twists it so absurdly that you actually recognize it, but from angles you never noticed were there. The one about Toys "R" Us deciding to spin backwards, not just it's famous R, but the T and the U to get "three times the brand awareness," or something like that, floored me. It was brilliant. The book just keeps going like that, and nobody is spared. Executives, working stiffs, high tech and low tech companies, young and old. And the way it deals with the whole demise of the dot com era is hilarious. Haven't read a funnier, and more surprising book in years.

Maybe it's ironic or prophetic on the author's part, but you'd have to say we're living in an "Economy of Errors" right now. That kind of puts a lot of pressure on this new book, but almost everything worth skewering about business is, in fact, skewered in Economy of Errors. And the best thing is, it's done with dry wit, absurdity, sarcasm, but without personal vindictiveness. True enough, some stories take [it] out of some individuals, like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or stock analysts or the President -- but at the same time they sum up and take apart entire genres and belief systems.

I loved "Bold New Economy Deserves Bold New Recession," the story about Alcoa betting the company on "eluminum," the first "web-only" metal, and the one that begins: "Today, more than ever before, women are in top executive positions, which means today, more than ever before, top male executives get to yell... GIRL FIGHT!"

To put together a book that's smart, laugh-out-loud funny, and timely is a beautiful, beautiful thing.