Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day- An unconvential guide to surviving corporate employment

By David St. Lawrence

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 0976650304
• ISBN13: 9780976650300
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Bent Crow Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Get Ready to Vote with Your Feet!

Danger Quicksand is the most honest career advice book I've ever read. I encountered it first online after I complained about my situation to my partner, a practicing psychiatrist, and we sought an outside perspective to bounce our thoughts off of. We got more than we bargained for in St. Lawrence's book and highly recommend it. Beyond salient section titles like "Signs of a Problem Workplace" and "Why Your Manager Lies," you will encounter heaps of worthwhile advice like the choices we can make (Voting with our feet, p.112), how to treat co-workers (You will find that it is far better to be interested in others than to be interesting to others. It is also saner, p.106), and what can happen after whistleblowing ([This about co-workers:] They recognize you as a lightning rod that is already buzzing with a corona discharge and will withdraw from you at the first opportunity, p.85). It must be noted that St. Lawrence has been trained as an engineer. One criticism my partner had of the book is that it devotes little space, if any, to salvaging a problem workplace. Here, St. Lawrence's message is more realistic and just the opposite: He wants to help people take responsibility for their careers and bail out of difficult situations to find better workplaces or independent employment opportunities. So, if you are in need of some saavy advice and ready to help yourself, St. Lawrence has written this book for you. It's never too late.

Practical advice to maintaining sanity in your career

Earlier this year I made a career change, leaving a job I'd held for more than six years. For four or more of those years I thought I had "the perfect job" (for me) and quite seriously thought I might be one of the rare souls who stays working for the same company for most of their life. I thrived on going the extra mile and working miracles, as it were. Conditions changed, internal conditions deteriorated, and the perfect job morphed into a soul-draining daily drudge. Luckily for me I found David's blog (where he first fleshed out the essays in this book) and his advice helped me dispassionately assess my current situation, understand what had been happening and why, and gave me the motivation and optimism to make a career change. By the time he published his book I'd left the toxic job, was earning more, working with people who respected me, and had also begun working on a self-publishing project of my own to provide some secondary income. I'm sure that anyone who wants to do better in life will gain far more than $19.95 worth of insight & perspective from reading this book.

Heart of Darkness, Inc.

Most books dealing with careers start out by showing the reader how he or she can go about landing a great job. David St. Lawrence does things differently. His primary audience is people who already have jobs, especially those who work in large corporations, and who either sense that things are somehow going wrong... or fail to sense it. I think it is fair to say that St. Lawrence doesn't regard the working environment at most large companies as reflecting the values we would most like to see there: truth, fairness, reward according to merit, and excellent communication. What he writes about the fate of whistle blowers is one of many examples he cites of upended ethics. Indeed, his view of the corporate working life is infused with darkness-though he lightens this with nice touches of humor, and tangy expressions. For example, one subchapter is entitled "Why Your Manager Lies." You've just got to read that part, for sure. It's not as if the author doesn't recognize that there can be some awfully attractive elements to corporate life. Another subchapter is: "Seduced by a Fantastic Job." But he emphasizes the risks of wholehearted subscription to a company's work ethic, and doesn't hesitate to cite the costs of such dedication that he has paid in his own career. Much of the first two-thirds of Danger Quicksand is devoted to coaching employees on how to analyze their work environment, and counseling employees on what to do before or after the environment becomes insupportable. His term is "exit strategy." The last part of the book, however, develops some more hopeful themes: work-family balance; how to get a better job with a better company; and "doing your own thing" by starting a "micro business" are three of them. If you are working, and feeling uneasy about your career, reading Danger Quicksand might make you more uncomfortable. But it also might impel you to take action that will ultimately benefit you greatly.

A Sanity Check for Corporate Employees

David has a great way of bringing the stuff thats going on around you in the corporate world into focus so that you can make reasoned decisions about your career path.