Bossing na jehlách - O kobrách, kudlankách a jiné havěti v práci – Růžičková Julie (2021)

Although the central theme of the book is a suggestive description of the oppressive escalating manifestations of pathological behavior in the workplace, the author, through her heroine, the silent warrior Bizárka, manages to glimpse the distressing narrative passages with a healthy dose of irony and humor. The tragedy, which lacks an existential dimension with elements of a certain nostalgia for lost time, exhaustion, and bitterness, alternates with comedic tones, while the given situations are underscored by a specific literary language that combines precise metaphorical expressions with neologisms, slang, and corporate jargon. The analysis of unhealthy behavior and toxic milieu is thus colored by a liberating dimension of ironic detachment, which saves the main heroine from falling into the hopeless abyss of despair, powerlessness, and lethargy. When encountering a psychopathic individual who holds a certain power over others (which in many cases devolves into sheer tyranny), it is extremely important from the individual's perspective to preserve one's dignity or at least what remains of it and to somehow piece those fragments back together. And that is what the main heroine is primarily concerned with. In the moral quagmire of the given company XY, she strives to remain true to herself, with the ethical values she has always upheld, to survive with a clear...