Texas Pages

"Then We Came to the End," by Joshua Ferris, was a critical darling from last year, making The New York Times 10 best list, among other honors. It was just released in paperback.

It's billed as comedy, but the humor is gallows-variety. As business dries up at a once-high-flying ad agency, the workers have little to do but gossip, grouse and await the moment the inevitible layoff comes. They watch as one by one, former co-workers are forced to "walk Spanish" -- a term borrowed from pirates -- out the door.

"We were fractious and overpaid," the novel begins. "Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen." The whole novel is written in that first-person-plural voice of the collective office mindset. Amazingly, that does not come off as gimmicky.

That collective mindset never has much to focus on, work-wise. To fill the void, there is endless chatter, from petty complaints about meaningless tasks to serious concerns about life and death. Even in the dramatic moments, the issues can turn out to be frighteningly insignificant.

That struggle against insignificance is what connects this book to a fall release, "Last Night at the Lobster," by Stewart O'Nan. O'Nan's characters, working their last night at a Red Lobster that the corporate owners have decided to shut down, are about as far away from a Chicago high rise as possible. But their battles -- against demanding customers, unruly children and each other -- will ring true with anyone who has ever stocked a salad bar or mopped up after a sick kid.

Manager Manny DeLeon is responsible for holding everyone, and himself, together on this final night. It's complicated by the fact that as the restaurant closes, he's also closing down the relationship with one of his workers, Jacquie.

Manny spends much of "Lobster" trying to hide his pain in making sure his restaurant operates according to the rules -- from washing his hands to checkng freezer temperatures -- the rules set by the same faceless corporation that is casting most of the team adrift.

"He's whitewashed graffiti and pushed heart-healthy menu and taught his crew that every little bite counts, trying to produce a magical dining experience for his custimers. He's done everything they asked, yet there must have been something more, something he missed."

It's similar to how a character facing cancer in "Then We Came to the End" finds that the office, even where there is no work to be done, is the only refuge for someone who has focused on work instead of relationships.

With their focus on isolation and lonlieness, both novels come off as sad, overall. If their lessons were that the modern workplace is a meaningless, empty grind, you'd call them pathetic.

But both also share the idea that even where our companies don't value us, our co-workers do mean something. Like them or not, our lives are entwined with theirs. And as grim as it can be to face some of them every week, sometimes the grimmer prospect is knowing that you won't be facing them again.