The Wage Slave’s Glossary (Trade Paper)

Description

AS FEATURED IN THE OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST LIBRARY

Everybody knows a brown-noser when they see one. But how about a greeter? A workbrickle? A jack? Can they tell downsizing from grey bearding or bright sizing?

With The Idler’s Glossary (2008), Mark Kingwell and Joshua Glenn offered a spirited defense of leisure. As confirmed idlers themselves, they assured us their Glossary could provide “everything you need to know about how to conduct a life.” Today, however, as we recover from the worst global recession since 1929, the work-world is a very different place. In order to understand it better, our anti-capitalist etymologists are therefore putting down their cigars, picking up their shovels, and drudging out English from the ditch of corporate jargon. For anyone who’s ever had to moil for high muckety-mucks, The Wage Slave’s Glossary is essential reading—as the moral wit of Kingwell & Glenn is indispensable to the present age.

“A tiny, lovely book, beautifully designed and illustrated by Seth, delightful to pick up and hold in your hand”—Geist

“Exhausted demonstrators looking for the lightest reading they can find, at least in the literal sense, might want to pick up Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell’s Wage Slave’s Glossary, a nifty pocket-size volume also spotted on the shelves in Zuccotti Park. A follow-up to the authors’ Idler’s Glossary, the book provides energized Marxists and depressed Dilberts alike a witty guide to terms like “air family” (the false sense of community among co-workers), “afternoon farmer” (19th-century slang for someone who wastes the entiremorning), “keeping up with the Joneses” (the title of a popular cartoon that first appeared in 1913) and “on the wallaby” (Australian for “tramping the country on foot, looking for work”), not to mention more self-explanatory terms. (“Bossnapping,” anyone?)”
—New York Times

“A fun dictionary of modern office idioms and new economy jargon.”
—The Atlantic

“A wry brand of enlightenment … a pocket-sized guide to the terms of paid labor.”
—Boston Globe

“A light-serious compilation against capitalism run amok.”
—Globe & Mail

“The Wage Slave’s Glossary is a grand and saddening tour of language past and present … a labor of love, and worth your money and time.”— Michael Leddy, Orange Crate Art