Office

Object Lessons

by Sheila Liming, Christopher Schaberg (Series Editor), Ian Bogost (Series Editor)

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

From its origins in the late 19th century to its decline in the 21st, Sheila Liming's Office narrates a cultural history of a place that has arguably been the primary site of labor in the postmodern economy.

During the post-war decades of the 20th century, the office rose to prominence in culture, achieving an iconic status that is reflected in television, film, literature, and throughout the history of advertising. Most people are well versed in the clichés of office culture, despite evidence that an increasing number of us no longer work in offices.

With the development of computing technology in the 1980s and 90s, the office underwent many changes. Microsoft debuted its suite of multitasking applications known as Microsoft Office in 1989, firing the first shot in the war for the office's survival. This book therefore poses the how did culture become organized around the idea of the office, and how will it change if the office become extinct?

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic .

Genres: Nonfiction

152 pages, Paperback

Published November 12, 2020

About the author

Sheila Liming is the author of Office and What a Library Means to a Woman, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Lapham's Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Point, among others. She lives, teaches, and plays the accordion in Burlington, Vermont. Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time is her latest book.

Reviews

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a little eerie feeling, reading this in the middle of a global pandemic, working from home since March. Many magazines announced already "Death of the office", so you can treat this book as a kind of an elegy. But that doesn't mean it lost its relevance. It is a fascinating, erudite tour of the history of the office as space and as an idea, beautifully written and often funny. Definitely worth reading.

The book is a part of an interesting series, Object Lessons, about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent addition to the wonderful Object Lessons series and does exactly what the best of them do – encourages the reader to think differently about the subject (or indeed object), to re-examine assumptions, to question expectations and essentially look and learn. Here the author takes a fairly straightforward look at the office from its early days until now, offering facts and personal opinions in an entertaining but always thought-provoking way. Published pre-Covid, it unfortunately misses out on the rise of the home office – perhaps the author will feel inspired to write another chapter at some point. In the meantime, read and enjoy.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series of books concerning academic yet highly personal looks at things you'd never expect to read a whole book about, now turns to the office, and provides a very good, if now highly flawed, summary. We see the architecture of the open-plan office, in great contrast to the secluded, cloistered cubicles of the clerics that were to become clerks, in a section that does seem to go too far in criticising the position of the women versus the men. Are the receptionists not supposed to be at point of entry, then? The hierarchy of the old office tower block, the career of the typewriter and filing cabinet, and even the office party – where cinema has it, the water cooler is always full of red wine – all get discussed. (Everything is here except, ironically, the 'buck stops here' kind of desk sign that the author's own tw*tter banner image shows.) I would have wished for a few more cultural references – too much, in my mind, was made of a bare few books and "Mad Men", but I do think what we get is sound. Sound, that is, until the final sections, concerning the future of the work space. It's not Google's namby-pamby playground style, or Amazon's pretentious let's-all-work-in-a-jungle Spheres, and it's not coffee shops. But through no fault of its own this book loses a few marks in the process of being finished before it could reflect on global pandemics and official urges to stay off public transit, out of public spaces, and to work at home. It's a shame this book cannot reflect that societal change, which was not a trickle off the commute but a deluge. What we get, to repeat, is really quite salient, even if it never added the extra impetus of a great book, and the suggestion that reading about such a dryly unusual subject was fun. Three and a half stars, in light of one thing and another.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the better entries in Bloomsbury Academic’s Object Lessons series. The book is well organized and provides in-depth history and curiosities that are perfect for this type of series of books. Author Liming touches briefly on literature and film/television references.

We see the full cycle of the office here, with the early beginning and the looming sense of the end of the office. Although the book was written just before the pandemic, which sent most of the office workers to work from home, upending many assumptions of what a worker or manager could accomplish when not all in the same building. It is unfortunate timing and would be enlightening if Liming provided thoughts on this latest change in offices. Perhaps there will be an addendum or additional chapter added at some future date. Office part two.

Book rating: 4.5 stars

Thanks to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel a little sorry for this book! Whilst I found it fascinating and have added a multitude of films, novels and articles to my list of things I want to explore further (particularly intriguing, Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision, the weird quietness of the Amazon head office and the rise of members clubs), I can’t help but think that the last 6 months have meant it’s ended up far too short. Give it a year or two, and there’ll be room for a whole additional chapter about the evolution of the office as many, many more people work from home! Even so, a great snippet of insight and a wonderful introduction to a wider sociological/anthropological/architectural field.

[Dorsa Ehya · Rating 4 out of 5]

اگر مثل من، کار برایتان علاوه بر درآمدزایی، جنبه‌ای روحی دارد و باز هم مثل من حضور در دفاتر کار برایتان معنادار و پررنگ است این کتاب می‌تواند برایتان جذاب باشد و به دغدغه‌هایتان نزدیک. از بررسی دقیق و موشکافانه‌ تاریخی (که به زبان ساده و روان هم بیان می‌شود) تا توجه به جزئیات مثل نقش کالاهای غیرضروری اما معنابخش در دفترهای کار در این کتاب به شکلی خواندنی در کنار هم قرار گرفته‌اند.

[Pouya · Rating 3 out of 5]

مطالعه‌ی جالبی بود برای کارمندی مثل من. و خب نگاه متفاوتی داشت به محل کار و به خصوص دفتر کار و جزئیاتش.

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an absolutely fascinating read. People complain about the invasiveness of Big Tech these days, but it is amazing to read about all these little nuances where companies have been manipulating humans since the birth of capitalism and in so many small ways I never even expected.

Recommended for fans of ObjectLessons Series, Lab Rats: Why Modern Work Makes People Miserable, Elephants on Acid, The Psychopath Test, A Field Guide to Lies, Oliver Sacks

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the copy.