Harry Dobbs

If you’ve ever worked in comms or HR or any of those weird, hard-to-define office jobs with a made-up title, then you might like Ben Pester’s novel The Expansion Project, which came out last month. As well as a workplace satire, it’s also a surreal drama about love, loss and memory – but it’s probably the portrayal of modern corporate life that will draw people in at the start.

The story’s largely set in the fictional Capmeadow Business Park, where protagonist Tom Crowley “writes messaging”.

In one episode, representative of the novel’s general feeling, there’s “an issue relating to microcopy on an onboarding form”, which leads to a familiar scene:

“A button currently said SUBMIT, but Cath Corbett wanted to change it to APPROVE. I advised we should keep it as SUBMIT […] Someone called Ash Maltby wanted to just use DONE. More people joined the chat.”

I’ve had these situations at work, where many people (or ‘stakeholders’) are added to an online chat regarding some decision or other. The motivation for this is often that the more people included, the more the blame can be spread if something goes wrong.

The novel contains footnotes from a mysterious ‘Archivist’ in the future, who expresses surprise at the low quality of Tom Crowley’s work. After reading his approved text about a complimentary lunch event for employees, they note:

“He does all this rushing around […] yet his actual work, his product, is really just nothing. What even is this? What value does it add?”

The answer, of course, is “almost none”. Even so, there is constant stress and political manoeuvring among the workers in Capmeadow. Tom’s manager Cath is fearful of other teams “taking the credit” for her team’s work and she becomes increasingly agitated upon experiencing “difficulties accessing management-level resources”. She gradually gets squeezed out by her peers, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Whatever’s happened, she’s no longer flavour of the month.

Workers at Capmeadow relax with matcha hot chocolate and katsu sandos from the new mall. There are also on-site peace gardens and pods where they can sleep overnight. A lot of the work and leisure products (be they software or snacks) are Japanese or Japanese-inspired.

There are wellness professionals at the workers’ disposal too, who they are encouraged to see when feeling overwhelmed. They say things like: “it’s normal for you to feel that way” and steer them away from radical thoughts.

But the novel’s heart comes from protagonist Tom’s love for his children. They are the reason he carries on. His knowledge is niche and he’s lucky to have his job.

It’s a good feeling, being able to provide for your loved ones. It can offset the bad feelings around the work itself.

I worked in comms and HR for most of my twenties and didn’t have children to keep me there. I probably would have stayed if I had that pressure, instead of leaving to take a less well-paid job and indulge my own interests.

One of the most persistent thoughts I had in my corporate roles was that a teenager could have done my work. Maybe some teenagers would struggle with the artificially maintained sense of crisis (artificially maintained through the imposition of arbitrary deadlines that constantly change) but it’s hard to say.

The actual meat of what I was doing wasn’t anything difficult: writing, editing and proof-reading straightforward sentences that included phrases and buzzwords filtered down from clients and superiors.

The money was good.

In The Expansion Project, one worker leaves Capmeadow after one day. It’s good she gets out early because Capmeadow sucks people in with its perks and security, making it harder to quit the longer you’re there.

The reason she gives for fleeing so quickly:

“I just can’t die like this.”

Which sums it up well.