Who Moved My Blackberry?

by Lucy Kellaway and Martin Lukes

Book Overview

The television show The Office meets Bridget Jones in a novel set in an office so dysfunctional, it's bound to strike a chord with any nine-to-fiver. A compulsively readable, hilarious novel told through the e-mail messages of Martin Lukes. Martin Lukes is a man who is good at taking credit where it isn't due; a man who works hard at "personal growth" but consistently lets down everyone around him; a man who communicates with...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401302513
• ISBN13: 9781401302511
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Low Hanging Fruit

After working for a company whose favorite morale boosting word was "Improvation," and being surrounded by "Big Rocks" and the " Attitude" which was the basis of our performance reviews that rated you 1-5 based on how you lived the principals over the past year (you couldn't actually get a 5, according to management, because that would put you in the same realm as God, and no one is perfect!), I have to say that this novel is absolutely on target. If you think that people like Martin Lukes don't exist, and that they don't get promoted for sucking up rather than results, you haven't lived in Corporate America. (I know the book is set in the UK, but I have no personal experience there.) I will recommend this book to all of my ex-coworkers (who, at this current date, are going through a "reduction in force" so several of them will have a bit of free time coming up.)

Hilarious corporate satire

Lucy Kellaway's fictional 'Martin Lukes' character is the delightfully vapid, narcissistic director of marketing at a-b global who appears in Thursday editions of London's Financial Times newspaper. This book compiles a year's worth of Martin's columns in a series of e-mails and text messages. Instead of doing actual work, Martin flatters superiors, flirts with personal assistants and offers unsolicited self-promotion to everyone. He hires CoachworX! for an Executive Bronze Life Coaching Program to 'achieve performance levels that are 22.5 percent better than the very best I can be.' a-b global's CEO gives a speech to staff and investors from a golf course as the share price plummets and signs his e-mails 'I love you all'. The firm spends over $20 million on Project Rebrand and hires 12 rebranding consultants from Beyond the Box, but eventually obtains its new name from employee suggestions generated during a corporate 'on line jamming session'. Martin then spearheads the ill-fated Project Boxer Shorts to publicly donate obsolete corporate apparel featuring the old logo to homeless shelters. I enjoyed this book so much that I finished reading it within a day. Hopefully another year's worth of material will be collected into a sequel.

LOL Funny

If you've read this far in the reviews you already know this book is a satire on corporate work life. But as a connoisseur and practitioner of sarcasm and anything black that can possibly poke fun at Life's Absurdities I have to tell you this book is one of the funniest things I've seen or read since Seinfeld or the original Saturday Night Live series. If you are frustrated and disgusted with lazy bosses, full-of-themselves co-workers and clueless subordinates this book, about Martin Lukes, the quintessential Bozo of All Workplaces, was written just for you. Read it and weap...? Nah, read it and laugh. Out loud. Thank you Lucy Kellaway. I think I can make it through another day at work now.

Must-Read for Anyone In a Big Company

I know these people. Every one of them has a counterpart in my world. The management job titles, corporate initiatives, etc. are straight from the IBMs, Mercks, and marchFIRSTs of the country. I love how the funniest parts are what's NOT said . . . the inferred communications between the emails. The writing's top-notch. Encore! Encore!

Witty and intelligent story of office drama during modern times

I got this book for my birthday from my boss, since he knows I'll be graduating from college in less than a year and will enter the real world, finally! I had read Lucy Kellaway's stories in the Financial Times before and knew this would be a very smart, quick-witted, corporate comedy book. I read the prologue and it was all in e-mail format. I thought that was pretty cool. But as I flipped over the pages I noticed the WHOLE book is in email format, and most of the time it's the main character the only one who sends the emails. Some might be put off by this, but as I read on I became hooked on it. To sum it up (and not destroy the ending), the book takes the reader in a modern day office drama. There are several themes in the book that we see spring up so often nowadays, such as the rebranding of the company and the endless motivational programs set by upper management to keep every employee motivated and in line. It also portrays the mid-management employee very well, with his tireless efforts at lobbying upper management to get a better job, while during his journey he gets the help from a professional and personal life coach. A great page turner. I read the book on a DUB-JFK flight, in less than 6 hours. I would give this book 6 starts, if it were available.