Joshua Ferris's debut novel captures the absurdity and pathos of office life through the collective voice of an advertising agency weathering layoffs during an economic downturn. The unprecedented narrative choice—'we' instead of 'I'—creates the effect of tribal knowledge, office gossip elevated to art form, as the staff obsesses over who will be fired next, speculates about their boss's mysterious illness, and finds ways to fill the hours between terrors. Ferris worked in advertising before writing fiction, and his satire has the precision of insider knowledge: the jargon, the meaningless meetings, the desperate attempts to appear busy, the genuine friendships that develop despite the artificial environment. The novel follows the agency through seasons of crisis, tracking individual stories within the collective—the walk-out staged by burned-out Tom Mota, the romance between two unlikely colleagues, the escalating office pranks that relieve tension. But beneath the comedy lies genuine grief about work's central place in American identity and what happens when that identity is threatened. The workers define themselves by their jobs, yet the jobs feel meaningless; they spend more time with colleagues than family, yet layoffs reveal how contingent these relationships are. Ferris writes brilliant set pieces—a missing employee's memorial service, the competitive display of grief when a coworker dies—while building toward emotional revelations that earn rather than undercut the novel's humor.