• Company

  • By: Max Barry
  • Narrated by: William Dufris
  • Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
  • 3.6 out of 5 stars (584 ratings)

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Company  By  cover art

Company

By: Max Barry
Narrated by: William Dufris
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Publisher's summary

Nestled among Seattle's skyscrapers, The Zephyr Holdings Building is a bleak rectangle topped by an orange-and-black logo that gives no hint of Zephyr's business. Lack of clarity, it turns out, is Zephyr's defining characteristic. The floors are numbered in reverse. No one has ever seen the CEO or glimpsed his office on the first (i.e., top) floor. Yet every day people clip on their ID tags, file into the building, sit at their desks, and hope that they're not about to be outsourced.

Stephen Jones, a young recruit with shoes so new they squeak, reports for his first day in the Training Sales Department and finds it gripped by a crisis involving the theft of a donut. In short order, the guilty party is identified and banished from the premises and Stephen is promoted from assistant to sales rep. He does his best to fit in with his fellow workers, among them a gorgeous receptionist who earns more than anyone else, and a sales rep who's so emotionally involved with her job that she uses relationship books as sales manuals, but Stephen is nagged by a feeling that the company is hiding something. Something that explains why when people are fired, they are never heard from again; why every manager has a copy of the Omega Management System; and most of all, why nobody in the company knows what it does.

©2006 Max Barry (P)2006 Tantor Media, Inc.

Critic reviews

  • Audie Award Finalist, Humor, 2007

"Mr. Barry is a deft and focused satirist, and his sense of business ethics is right on the money." (The New York Times)
"[Barry's] at his funniest lampooning the suits that tread the stage, consumed by the sound and fury of office politics that signify nothing." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Company

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    164
  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • 2 Stars
    50
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Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
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    35
  • 2 Stars
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Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
    69
  • 3 Stars
    51
  • 2 Stars
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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Ridiculous

What a ridiculous book! I made it through 2 hours and gave up.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Hilarious

Unfortunately this book really hits home to many of us with more than a few years in the workforce. All of the characters are identifiable, with clean, sharp humor.

I highly recommend this book.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Fun Listen

I loved this book and the characters. It definitely held my interest. If you have ever worked for a corporation that just didn’t make sense it is a book for you.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

the reader doesn't get it

I loved Jennifer Government, which I read, and didn't like Company, to which I listened. I suspect the difference is not in Max Barry, the author, but in the reader. He misses the character of the book - ironic and deadpan - and instead reads it as though he were auditioning for I Love Lucy. Big lines, big emphasis, big big big. All too big. Maybe he should catch Weeds.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great Read

Funny, witty read. Enjoyed the play on the office characters that everyone can relate to. Narrator does a great job on portraying each character, as well.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Funny and easy listen

I have read a lot of comments about the narrator and I personally liked the voices and enjoyed the book. I thought it was pretty funny, not really what I expected but I still liked it alot.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

A good read ruined

I started reading a friend's copy of Company randomly. I enjoyed the first 100 pages so much that I plunked down my money on the audible version. What a mistake. The problem was not the book but rather the narration. The voices are so overdone and ridiculous that the book is rendered unlistenable. All of the biting, subtle, satire is completely lost as the reader hits you over the head with his interpretation of the characters. Save your Audible credits on this one and pick up the hardcopy.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Good fun

If you're looking for piercing new insight into the corproate world, this isn't it. But if you work as a cog in the machine of a large company as I do, or enjoy Dilbert or "the Office" on TV, then this will make you laugh and is well worth the price. I found the reader to be excellent and thought he picked up nicely on the spirit of the book.

Now when I talk with my fellow cogs about "senior management", it takes on a whole new meaning...

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Realized I am living in this fiction!

Very interesting, and make me laugh at my own corporate life!
Great reader as well.

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