we live in a world of excess: too many kinds of coffee, too many magazines, too many types of bread, too many digital recordings of Beethoven's Ninth, too many choices of rearview mirrors on the latest Renault. Sometimes you say to yourself: It's too much, it's all too much.

When you're 'recruiting' people in temporary positions for the firm (short-term contracts, free-lancers, etc.) treat them well: remember, they're the only ones who actually do any work.

Business and its logic of productivity have become the reference point in a society that thinks marketing every time it opens its mouth.

the middle manager is doomed to remain just that. Once an office rat, always an office rat.

Only communist regimes have churned out more jargon than modern business.

Never, under any circumstances, accept a position of responsibility. You will be forced to work harder with no other benefits than a few extra bucks - 'peanuts,' as they say, if that.

although the typist has disappeared, her work has not: now you do it yourself. ... Since most companies have reduced the managerial ranks, there are fewer and fewer bosses, so you become a manger, his boss, and his secretary all rolled into one.