Mary Tomlinson – författare

My Commute and The Journey Continues form a two-part fictionalized memoir dedicated to the disappeared of American corporate life. Its main motif is narrator Alisons commute, first to CHN Crumbles, Inc., a multinational corporation in which she works at a relatively low-level clerical job, then to a succession of temporary positions, and finally to Big Best, an acquisitive octopus that adheres to no law but Murphys.

Alison has a vision, appropriate for the millennium, showing that for all of us to survive, workers must unite in a cooperative union, emulating the bees. She is also enchanted, if not always enlightened, by Pandora, a computer-based genie who reveals the future by means of the cards dealt in cyberspace solitaire.

Alisons daily commute is revealed as a metaphor for her life as she interacts with the menaces on the highway and the equally grim hazards of company politics. She seeks guidance from the aphorisms in fortune cookies and from co-worker Celeste, a white-magic witch who tries to improve life in the department.

Among the other characters she meets on her corporate journey are Freddie, a womanizing, vindictive manager . . . Stephanie, a young, fast-track executive who caters to Freddie and is mentored by him . . . Rose-Says-Not-to-Tell, a co-worker who relays all company gossip . . . Bonita, the Queen of Junk Email . . . and the executives at Big Best, whose speech Alison finds as hard to understand as Pandoras coded prophecies.

Alisons observations of dejobbing practices and its extensive vocabulary, the various mangers strategies and foibles, and her co-workers concerns, complaints, and day-to-day struggles to survive should hit home with any reader who has recently worked for a major American corporation.