Rats, The

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They were hired for a job in which it was unclear what they would be doing, and when they asked for guidance they were told that people who needed direction were not cut out for the modern workplace; they were supposed to be “self-directed.” (c) have been found stuffed with the gnawed shavings of the wood-based, spring-loaded snap traps that are used in attempts to kill them.” This is British, but not overly British. He does use the often never used word in London, THE, even in the title. The Brits do not go to The University or The Hospital, the just go to University or Hospital, if it fits in their sedule, that is. People are not going to get less pissed. People’s lives are going to get worse. People are going to be even more angry and more polarized. The talk will get even crazier. Plan on violence. Plan on it. People do stupid shit when they’re angry. It’s not going to be good. I think we’re going to have a lot of civil unrest. Hopefully we will avoid a civil war. The last time the country was in crisis like this was 1968. Remember that? We had hundreds of bombings. We had riots. Well, it’s been fifty years. We’re right on cycle.” I read Dan Lyons ‘Disrupted’ about his experiences working with Hubspot and found it very interesting. In contrast, this book takes a broader view and discusses why the world of work is so much more stressful and less satisfying today than in the past.

I do enjoy how at the end of the book, there's a return to true stakeholder focused organization rather than shareholder focused startups. The whole get funding, get rich and the get out philosophy has encouraged young business talent to focus on what makes the most money rather than the most sustainable, long lasting and socially beneficial business. There's a great opportunity for the profit and non-profit to learn from each other. The epilogue indicates that one female rat survived the purge by being trapped in the basement of a grocery shop. There, it gives birth to a new litter, including a new white two-headed rat. The book's not all bad news; Lyons also profiles some businesses, including some venture capitalists, who are more interested in stakeholders than shareholders and, as a result, setting Friedman's style on its ear. Businesses based on a social enterprise model do well for themselves, their employees and, ultimately, their shareholders. Percy Smedley-Taylor - British Colonel named Camp Commander, responsible to the Japanese for the P.O.W.s; later appears as a director of Struan's Holdings, MP, in Clavell's subsequent novel Whirlwind. However, it's far more GROSS than any '70's television show could be. This is 'pre-splatter-punk', right up there with "The Wizard of Gore" kinda' imagery from the Drive-In of yesteryear.Some were ... coerced into “forced fun” activities, like indoor skydiving, ballroom dancing, or trapeze training, and told they were supposed to be having fun. One young woman had been fired because, as her boss put it, “You’re not excited enough.” (c) This was a solid, old school, creature horror tale. It’s set in London during the 1970s so it’s a bit dated but I still enjoyed it. There’s a smart and heroic main character trying to help the UK government defeat the rat epidemic. Harris was a bit full of himself at times but I had to cheer for someone! I did not expect to read a novel first published in 1974 and find it so gruesome as a modern-day reader! This was probably a massive oversight on my part, given that this was the book that defined a genre! In his memoir, The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy, former management consultant Matthew Stewart recalls his first job interview in which he was tested on his ability to bullshit: “The purpose of the exercise was to see how easily I could talk about a subject about which I knew almost nothing on the basis of facts that were almost entirely fictional. It was, I realized in retrospect, an excellent introduction to management consulting.” (c)

It suffers very much from “first novel syndrome”. We have a rather dull everyman lead (who may be the least interesting character in the entire book, save for some unnamed tourists... and the tourists are possibly debatable). The book is structured almost like a series of short stories, with most chapters being random citizens chased/devoured by rats in a new and creative way, while our lead just happens to tie together everything together in a few interconnected chapters. For the last two years, I have made it my mission to speak to as many people as I can to better understand the modern workplace and why work today seems to make so many people unhappy. My theory is that at least some of the unhappiness at work comes from being herded into silly workshops where people are fed a bunch of touchy-feely nonsense about self-improvement and transformation. (c) An old abandoned house in East London, surrounded by trees and bushes, so long inhabited almost no one remembered it was still out there. But it was. An unwary vagrant enters it, totally oblivious in his own drunkenness, he never made it out. Something festers inside the house, and now, now it won't be long before it starts to spread out into the city, to feed again. And again... Seriously, can you imagine the city of London being infested with large deadly rats that like to eat humans and animals?! Eek, eek!!Altını çizdiğim pek çok cümle/paragraf oldu: “Sürekli korku altında yaşayanlar işlerini iyi yapamaz” bunlardan ve kitabın temel argümanlarından biri, laboratuvar kobaylarının üzerinde yapılan korku deneyleri ile iş hayatında çalışanlara yapılan muamele arasında bir benzerlik kuruyor. İleriki bölümlerde de sık sık değinilen bu konu, diğer mutsuzluk nedenleriyle birlikte resmi tamamlıyor: “para, güvencesizlik, değişim ve insandışılaştırma”. If you've wondered why you're feeling less valued at work, it's because you are. When human beings are treated like copy paper (human "resources"), it's easy to pretend we don't matter. Yet, we provide the work that turns the wheels of business and, in turn, profits to shareholders.

Sullivan, for reasons not particularly clear to himself, decides to spend four seasons in a New York City alley observing rats in their daily habitat. Herbert became inspired to write The Rats in early 1972, while watching Tod Browning's Dracula; specifically, after seeing the scene in which Renfield describes his recurring nightmare about hordes of rats. Linking the film to childhood memories he had of rats in London's East End.The most interesting sections didn't happen until toward the end of the book. They were the chapters covering the spread of the bubonic plague in the middle ages and the pest control measures that were taken after 9/11. The latter was particularly interesting because that's not something people really think about. But other than that, meh. Zayıf bulduğum tarafı ise bazı önermelerini iyi temellendirememiş veya argümanlara dayandıramamış olmasıydı. Örneğin; kitap boyunca eleştirilen Agile ve Lean Start-up’ın neden başarısız olduğuna dair somut ve tatmin edici örnekler yoktu, daha ziyade hepimizin işyerlerinde yaptığı serzenişlere benziyordu. Evet, “one-size-fits-all” bir çözüm olmadığında hemfikirim, ama bu yöntemlere aşina biri olarak faydalı oldukları alanlar da olduğunu düşünüyorum. Bence kitabın en zayıf yönü buydu. Kitabın son bölümlerinde ise bunların tersine, doğru ve insan odaklı uygulamaların olduğu şirketler anlatılıyor. Dünyada hala iyi ve idealist insanlar varmış.