Customer Reviews

Working Wounded : Advice that Adds Insight to Injury

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First Aid for the Working Wounded by T.S. Peric' Most of us, at some point in our working career, labored within a crummy company, faced-off with a bullying boss or suffered the ignominy of a firing. Most of us have shared workplace horror stories or listened sympathetically to someone who really took a battering. Let's face it. Workplace dissatisfaction ranks high on the angst scale for the 90s and this is the audience to which nationally syndicated columnist Bob Rosner directs his book, Working Wounded: Advice that Adds Insight to Injury (Warner Books). While bookshelves are littered by the bunches with titles on job hunting, job coping and job escaping, Rosner manages to whip out a bouquet that offers a few, fresh petals. Too many job-help books sound like a dry managerial tract from some experimental work environment which exists only in the mind of the writer. Rosner's laboratory is real: true-life stories culled from calls for help he gathers through a weekly column and a Working Wounded website (workingwounded.com). Fortunately, Rosner manages to describe this with a sense of humorous outrage that makes for a good read. Rosner's faces the task about changing a bull-headed boss' inflexibility to your way of thinking in "Hold the Garlic! I Want My Boss to Shape-Change". He goes on to note "His [the boss] name was Dick-but we called him 'Cold Shower' because that's what he gave to every new idea that came across his desk. After collecting more bullet holes than a stop sign on a country road, I finally decided to bring him an idea he couldn't shoot down-one of his own." Rosner dispenses advice from the experts who are familiar with the workplace, covering basic issues such as "Poked From All Sides: How to Cope with Your Co-Workers" to gathering confidence in our burgeoning techno-state with "Stuck In The Web: How To Score Points with Technology". Rosner offers advice in a lively, succinct fashion, sprinkling the book with timely tidbits abou!t working that leave you nodding in agreement or shaking your head in anger. First, there's "The Working Wounded Quotebook". "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." Oscar Wilde. Second, you have the Working Wounded List. "They Asked You What . . . Real Questions Asked During Real Job Interviews A Wall Street bank asked women MBA graduates, 'Would you have an abortion to stay on the fast track?' While discount department store asked interviewees, 'How long can you hold your urine?'" Finally, my favorite: the e-mail received at Working Wounded. 1) "The Best Way to get a Promotion "Be on time, learn your job, go the extra mile, and don't suck up to the boss. 2) "The Other Best Way to Get a Promotion Two words: kiss butt!" 3) "Scrooge Lives. Last year at the Christmas party, the boss gave us all Christmas cards. We opened them up only to find pink slips inside. He said he thought the party atmosphere would take the edge off of being let go." And if you ever tire of reading of reading about the workplace, as a diversion you can relax with drawings from The New Yorker cartoonist Robert Mankoff which are found throughout the book. What Rosner never forgets in Working Wounded is that real people populate the workplace and that a deft combination of experience, inspiration, information and humor is the key to surviving a fresh wound and, if you recover, there just might be hope for you on the next job. How good is this book? When my sister Millie (an erudite, eclectic reader with a varied work history and a cool disposition to self-help employment books) leafed through the Working Wounded, she had a single comment: "When you're done with this, could I take a look?" She also like the cartoons. Regardless of the type of work you do, Working Wounded's message is about emotional protection on the job. Every smart police officer hits the streets with a bulletproof vest. That's how you should regard Working Wounded: Try it !on for size and it'll help you survive the bullets. - 30 -

Mr Rosner has succeeded in "compiling" a worthless piece of fiction. There is little original thinking from the author. It strikes this reader as exceedingly negative. He makes no attempt to connnect the worker with his or her own career. Instead, the book is about surviving in a war zone that is completely foreign to the worker-soldier. I am of the belief that each of us is capable of finding a work environment that is positive for our skills and talents. Mr Rosner apparently believes that we are forced into negative work places without choice. It will not be recommended to my career transition clients.

Mr. Rosner has a wonderful way of taking the questions I have often wondered about, but never asked, and laying the answers at my fingertips in down-to-earth, simple language. There's no walking on egg shells here! Let's face it... some of issues he is dealing with are less than exciting, but this is information we all need under our belts to make the most of the workplace. To take the sting out of it, he sets up each topic with with a funny personal story that leads right into the question at hand. It never failed to give me a sense of light-heartedness about it and set me up to enjoy the topic being tackled.

Today's buyer is said to be a savy one, well-educated about the products we buy. I consider a career as the major product in which I invest, and with Mr. Rosner's insight, I think anyone can make the best of our current and/or future workplace. While some of the chapters don't deal with my particular job, I think the workplace as a whole belongs to each of us. For instance, I have found value in the chapter that deals with the troubles faced by the "big boss," because it gives me important insight into how my "big boss" is feeling. Now I can approach him with an insider's viewpoint and score.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book a lot and hope you do too. I read on the cover that you can reach him by e-mail with questions. That's true. I've never failed to get a quick response from him to a workplace question. I like that about him. He doesn't yet you started and then leave you hanging.

I only wish the book had been longer.

I read the book Working Wounded in a couple of days. It is actually a quick read and rather humorous at times. There is a lot of great reference material in there.

The author was really writing his own biography throughout most of the book. I am thrilled that he had such wonderful oportunities in the past and in his future.

This book is best just for the Bibliography. Unfortunately, it doesn't have one so you have to read it chapter by chapter to get the books that may be relevant to what you need additional information to.

Good Luck, Bob! To everyone else, buy a different book, see if someone will loan you theirs, go to the library. Save the dough, because I don't think you will find it as insightful as the title implies.

Reading another positive attitiue business book is not going to help me with the reality of having a jerk for a boss. What Rosner offers is help for the sole at work. Told with humor and wit this book is a gem. If you have a real job in the real world this book is a breath of fresh air.

I heard the last 5 minutes of a radio interview with the Bob Rosner and had great hopes for this book. He interviews a lot better...

I bought the "Working Wounded" as a gift for the members of a team I once worked on. I felt that many of the situations that Bob Rosner brought to light measured up with how we dealt with our day. It went over quite well, and was entertaining as well as enlightening. I look forward to a second volume.

A humorous and informative collection of essays by a syndicated columnist, with the assistance of a talented cartoonist, Robert Mankoff, that addresses some of the most common, disturbing and intractable problems folks, at any level, face in the day-to-day workplace. From being assaulted from above to battered from below to surviving layoff or dismissal, this entertaining book gives down-to-earth advice. The theme is that solutions to your workplace problems need to be devised by you. Liberally peppered with cartoons, quips, brief stories and quotes, this work provides a lot of to-the-point guidance. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources and the CyberSpace SourceFinder.

Great cartoons, shallow insight