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.