What's in a name?

"So, what's up with the name?"

If you work (or more appropriately, worked) at the same company as a lot of contributors to this blog, you know that Bob is synonymous with Beelzebub. A corporate streamliner type, his sole existence is predicated on measuring every facet of your life through a system of metrics, reducing your life to a small stain of data on a MS Excel spreadsheet.

But Bob doesn't just exist in our company. He's part of the corporate canon everywhere. He's the out of touch executive shaking your hand and calling you someone else's name. He's the bizarrely and frantically dedicated middle manager whose very life revolves around the company and his/her job. He's the explicitly evil soulless corporate shill whose idea of moving up the ladder is stepping on your face to get a leg up. In short, he (or she) is the person you look at each day in the office and think to yourself, "Jesus, what a fucking Bob."

Bob isn't everything we don't like about corporate culture. Annoying receptionists aren't Bobs, they're just people with severe personality defects clinging to the only job they can keep. That ridiculous co-worker who can't chew with her mouth closed and jumps into every conversation as if she's the foremost authority on whatever the subject may be isn't a Bob. She's just an ass. And the creepy guy who talks to no one and stalks through the office like a scared civet isn't a Bob. He's just creepy.

So we're not about picking on the zany characters in the office (although hearing great stories about their glaring faults is always welcome). Our main focus here is to tear down the Bobs. The corporate types. The shills. The "outside consultants." The people who take a perfectly good company and turn it into a joyless, metrics-driven hell hole.

That's what we're about here at TOTB. Fuck the Bobs. If you're interested in contributing, email us at thinkoutsidethebob@gmail.com.

It's time to think outside the Bob

Corporate America is sucking our souls right out of our bodies.

So why are so many of us sticking around? Why are we working jobs that we hate only to be devastated when we're laid off or fired?

Because we need health insurance. Or we like the people that we work WITH, just not the ones we work for. And of course, rent isn't gonna pay itself.

So you've got to whore yourself to the machine just a little bit. It's okay. There's no shame in it; we've all done it. This is a place of healing.

Thinking Outside the Bob (or TOTB) will be a place for you to vent, to read how bad others have it, and to just get away from the soul-crushing reality of corporate life.

You might not be able to escape it just yet, but you can bitch about it here.

More to come on the meaning behind the name, (hopefully) additional authors and updates, and articles/anecdotes/out and out lies about what makes office life so god awful.