Lloyd: What Happened [Paperback]

Stanley Bing (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Crown Publishers, Inc.; proof edition (1998)
• ASIN: B000KAHSPK
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,138,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanley Bing is a columnist for Fortune magazine and the bestselling author of Crazy Bosses, What Would Machiavelli Do?, Throwing the Elephant, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, 100 Bullshit Jobs..And How to Get Them, and The Big Bing, as well as the novels Lloyd: What Happened and You Look Nice Today. By day he is an haute executive in a gigantic multinational corporation whose identity is one of the worst-kept secrets in business.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great start, then big fizzle, July 25, 2002

By 

Gilbert Grant - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business (Paperback)

Stanely Bing's "Lloyd, What Happened" starts with a great satirical send-up on corporate life, complete with accompanying PowerPoint slides. But once Lloyd and his wife start having affairs about half-way through, the book loses its energy and its heart, and careens towards a rather unbelievable, slightly unsatisfying ending.

But this book is worth reading for the delicious parodies and witty comments on the state of American and International business as the reader follows the exploits of Lloyd, middle-manager extradonaire, has he attempts to complete the Big Deal, that would cost thousands their jobs and Lloyd his soul (he thinks). The book is presented as a journal, detailing one-year of Lloyd's life, and while Lloyd's business dealings with a variety of people and cultures are laugh-out loud funny, the interpersonal (business-speak) relationships Lloyd has with his family and his girlfriend, fall rather flat.

However, if you are looking a highly comic read on all aspects of business then "Lloyd, What Happened" is for you. Its a quick 400 page read, since many pages are devoted to hilarious Powerpoint Graphs detailing Lloyd's life. Overall, this book is worth reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and Strange...but a bad ending, March 16, 2000

By 

Mark Mascolino (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business (Paperback)

Wonderful novel. Bing really captures the idea of corporate life (business friendships, appearing productive, meetings). It is dead on. The strange part of the book is that it is littered with these PowerPoint-esque charts and graphs that pertain (sometimes only tangentially) to the plot line. I have never seen anything like it before. It is marred however by a week and contrived ending (almost like he had to hurry up and get it to his publisher or something).

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Send-up of Executive Life, December 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lloyd: What Happened: A Novel of Business (Paperback)

Bing was frequently dead-on funny in his insights into the mind of Lloyd, a prototype rising corporate executive. Bing was masterful in his ability to wring great humor out of Lloyd's mundane day-to-day corporate life. The Powerpoint charts sprinkled throughout were a great touch. The book is not without its dark side, however, as it presented the moral compromises that Lloyd was faced with. Although the book's structure was more of a journal than a plot driven form, I couldn't wait to see what Lloyd would do or think next. My only complaint was that the disciplined satirical tone of the book lapsed into a grossly exaggerated ending. Without giving anything away, the ending parodied corporate leadership in a "Wonka-esque" manner, including a non-linear elevator.