Customer Reviews

Work: A Celebration of One of the Four Basic Guilt Groups

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I've been reading Cathy comics since I was a kid, only because it seemed to be the only "girl comic book character" who was not a superhero but a real person. As an adult, I see so much more into Cathy's evolution as our culture has evolved. And as work is a major fascet of life, it shows how the workplace has changed right along with the rest of us.

How ironic are the latent effects of social changes and how they relate to the office! Within 30 years it's been turned onto itself. Women were being told so long ago that they didn't have to stay home but to have jobs, careers, interests, etc. other than our families. We went into the workforce with abundance. Ask anyone in an office, and they will tell you times have changed. Now, women work to make ends meet. More than half of the women (whether they be married, single or divorced) in my office are the breadwinners in their households. Many are supporting deadbeat boyfriends or some other terrible domestic situation. People are coming to work not because they want to support their families or themselves, but because they want to get away from whatever's going on at home. As Cathy points out, that's why so many offices look like homes now days.

Throw in all those factors plus the topics du jour (ex. sexual harrassment) and you've got a disaster on your hands. Cathy, though not always the most hilariously funny, reads it just like a Woody Allen movie. Stumbling through life one foot at a time until you take a flying Dick Van Dyke leap into disaster after disaster, but pulling through.