Mean Girls at Work: How to Stay Professional When Things Get Personal

For their latest, business coaches Crowley and Elster (coauthors of Working with You Is Killing Me) offer a wan, patronizing look at office politics between professional women. The authors break down the various kinds of “difficult” women one may encounter at work—those for whom being mean, overtly or covertly, is a method of career survival; cliquey women; drama queens; and those who are unaware they’re being mean. They break down the subtle kinds of insults and injuries that women inflict upon each other in the workplace, including gossip, exclusion, small slights, and outright sabotage. Crowley and Elster suggest a somewhat passive course of action—the “Don’t Go There” route, which describes a strategy of professional defusing—illustrated through a series of Cosmoesque exaggerated fables. While the suggested solutions are reasonable, and some of the scenarios are doubtless a concern for some women in the workplace, the overall tone is superficial. The opening (“Just as there’s a little bad in every boy, there’s a little mean in every girl”) should be a signal to the reader that unless she is a 14-year-old girl, she should look elsewhere for help navigating office politics. Agent: Elaine Markson, Markson Thoma Literary Agency. (Nov.)