That Could've Been an Email!: An Average Week at a Perfectly Normal Company
That Could've Been an Email is a satirical workplace novel set inside a perfectly normal fintech company, Applied Systems, Inc. (ASYS), during a week when nothing appears broken, but everything quietly is.
Told through meetings, emails, chat messages, training sessions, dashboards, and executive "alignment," the story follows employees at every level as leadership prepares for a high-visibility board visit while avoiding the one thing that might actually matter. As processes multiply and accountability diffuses, small issues are reframed as strategic narratives, status indicators remain green, and everyone agrees to circle back later.
The novel blends observational humor with unnervingly realistic corporate language, capturing the modern workplace exactly as it sounds and behaves. Its comedy comes from recognition rather than exaggeration: overlapping meetings with no agenda, performative transparency, mandatory culture initiatives, and decisions that never quite belong to anyone.
Structured across a single workweek, the book includes appendices such as internal glossaries, values statements, organizational charts, and press materials that extend the satire beyond the narrative itself.
That Could've Been an Email is a darkly funny examination of how large organizations communicate, defer responsibility, and mistake motion for progress-and how the people inside them learn to survive anyway. It will resonate with anyone who has ever stayed muted on a call, watched the meeting run long, and wondered how this became their job.
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