Corporate Crap: Lessons Learned from 40 Years in Corporate America

Corporate Crap: Lessons Learned from 40 Years in Corporate America takes a humorous look at all the business practices that cause employees to look for new employment. There are the obvious things like meetings, performance reviews, downsizing, and bosses from hell. But it's also esteem-sapping exercises like competing for wall offices or asking if it's okay to leave early; dress codes, task forces, brainstorming and engagement surveys; flip charts, org charts, hard stops, and hard-ons. Each chapter of Corporate Crap combines personal anecdotes, quotes from business experts, and the latest research to answer the question: If companies truly believe employees are their most valuable resource, why do they treat them like crap? Corporate Crap will entertain and inform anyone who has ever worked for a large organization – and make you think twice next time you apply for a job!

"Hilarious! Great read! Quick, easy and loads of laughs! Smart and insightful. A breath of fresh air." These are just some of the accolades for Corporate Crap: Lessons Learned from 40 Years in Corporate America. The book takes a humorous look at all the business practices that cause employees to look for new employment. Things like meetings, performance reviews, downsizing, and bosses from hell; competing for wall offices or asking if it's okay to leave early; dress codes, task forces, brainstorming and engagement surveys; flip charts, org charts, hard stops, and hard-ons. In Corporate Crap, readers will learn:

• How companies are trying to shorten meetings by making everyone stand and other forms of torture.

• Why 700 million vacation days went unused last year. (What is wrong with you people?)

• Why companies don't call employees "employees" anymore.

• Why the idea that "no idea is a bad idea" is a bad idea.

• What people really do during conference calls.

Companies invest enormous resources to improve their "corporate cultures," yet employees are as cynical and unengaged as ever. There are lessons to be learned here – lessons learned from 40 years of Corporate Crap.

Since 1978, Howard Harrison has worked for and with dozens of organizations. As a corporate communications executive, he has written for Fortune 500 CEOs, traveled with sales reps on customer calls, and learned waste management in the bowels of factories. He's dealt with Finance, sparred with Legal, and matched wits with Human Resources. He's worked in cubicles and had a corner office on the top floor of Chicago's Prudential Building – and not in that order. Corporate Crap is Harrison's third book. His first – NOW They Make it Legal: Reflections of an Aging Baby Boomer – was named a 2016 Reviewer's Choice by Midwest Book Review, which described it as "a memoir so vivid it's the next best thing to a time machine." Harrison's last book – The Great Divide: Story of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race – earned praise from Kirkus, which called it "lucid, well-paced and evocative … an absorbing read." After earning a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978, Harrison began his career in the corporate headquarters of Walgreen Company, serving as editor of the employee magazine, Walgreen World, and managing grand-opening publicity for new Walgreens stores. In 1980, he joined the Hospital Financial Management Association as writer/editor of an 84-page monthly journal before being lured away by the accounting firm Alexander Grant & Company to lead communications for the newly formed Grant Thornton International. In 1982–83, Harrison worked as an editor-at-large for the American Bar Association Press. Late in 1983, he joined Baxter International, a global health-care products company. He spent the next ten years at Baxter, leading employee communications during Baxter's historic merger with American Hospital Supply Corporation in 1985 and creating a new employee magazine that won the Gold Quill Award of Excellence from the International Association of Business Communicators in 1991. In 1994, Harrison formed Harrison Editorial Inc., providing writing and editorial services to a range of clients. In 2005, he rejoined Baxter as executive writer and editor, writing speeches for senior executives and managing the company's annual shareholder report, which won numerous awards under his direction. In 2011, Harrison returned to running Harrison Editorial, although these days he is spending more time on what he considers more rewarding pursuits – like writing books!