In Lloyd — What Happened: A Novel of Business, our hero's karma turns a hard right and heads into the land where the game of business is played for keeps. Entertaining? Yes. Enlightening? Yes. Relaxing? Forget it. Lloyd is a big-wheel middle manager type. His painful wake-up call comes the morning after some serious partying with fellow managers and before an important meeting the following morning. The big boss has a bombshell to explode on his unsuspecting crew. The numbers are bad, and he intends to cut costs. Some branch offices will be closed, and people will be laid off. Corporate headquarters staff will be cut in half, but the sales staff will be doubled. When he finally turns his attention to the title character, Lloyd says: "Send me to the beach." He wants to take early retirement, but no, the boss says he's the one who will lead the project. What happens as the story unfolds, fiction though it may be, holds many a lesson for managers and would-be managers. Included are many graphs illustrating (humorously) subjects such as Lloyd's state of mind under various conditions; his income vs. overall happiness; percent of Lloyd's bosses displaying insane behavior in various time periods, and ratings of business intoxicants. And, of course, there's the temptation caused by a beautiful MBA who is very interested in him. (See how he handles that!) There is so much truth in fiction.

Lloyd — What Happened: A Novel of Business by Stanley Bing, Crown Publishers.
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