The Bob Watson - by Greg Bardsley (Paperback)

About the Book

Rick Blanco "walks out of meetings. He's a serial meeting ditcher. A walk-out artist. An underground pioneer of worker-bee liberty. And strangely enough, no one seems to notice that he just gets up and walks out. While he'd like to consider himself an illusionist, he learned everything from studying a former colleague, the master of meeting ditches, Bob Watson. [Rick] continues Bob's legacy, going for more frequent and longer ditches, building on the art with every boring corporate meeting. Now, [he] wants to pull off his most important Bob Watson yet: skipping out of work to see his young nephew [as a favor to a woman he's chased for years]"--

Book Synopsis

From the author of Cash Out, a hilarious novel about one working stiff's day of hooky--reminiscent of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Office Space--and the insanity that ensues.

Rick Blanco walks out of meetings. He's a serial meeting ditcher. A walk-out artist. He's so good that no one seems to notice when he just gets up and walks out. A corporate illusionist of the covert kind, he learned his trade studying a former colleague, the master of meeting ditches, Bob Watson. Rick continues Bob's legacy, going for more frequent and longer ditches, building on the art with every boring corporate meeting.

Now, Rick wants to pull off his most important Bob Watson yet--skipping out of work to see his young nephew before he moves with his parents to Argentina. But things soon get complicated. As Rick leaves the office, he's mistaken for the company's human resources executive Dick Rayborne, a man made famous in HR circles for creating the hot new labor practice of "consourcing"--like "outsourcing" but with convicted felons. Convinced that he is the scummy Dick Rayborne, two cons, and a granny they call Mama, force Rick into six hours of mayhem, complete with home break ins and emergency board of directors meetings. Along the way, Rick realizes he has the opportunity to pull off the most meaningful Bob Watson imaginable, and still give his nephew a hug goodbye.

Refreshing, witty, and clever, The Bob Watson is a madcap tale of danger, adventure, and personal discovery.

From the Back Cover

Rick Blanco is no different from any other office slave--he hates stupid office meetings. What makes him special is he's done something about it. Following in the footsteps of Bob Watson--a former colleague and office illusionist--he's perfected the art of ditching meetings.

Now, Rick wants to pull off his most important Bob Watson yet--skipping out of work to go on a date with the woman he's chased for years. All she requires is that he first treat his precocious young nephew to his own Bob Watson and give him a break from a life filled with stress, college prep, and mandatory overachievement. The day is as exciting as Rick could have wanted, but not in the way he had hoped. Mistaken for one of the most notorious HR executives in the world, Rick is soon forced into six hours of mayhem, complete with home break-ins, a large bag of cash, a variety of naked people, and an emergency board meeting he may not be able to escape.

Along the way, Rick realizes there might be an important reason behind everything--a very important reason. Well, everything except for the bottle of Wesson oil.

Review Quotes

"Likably wry and dementedly screwball, THE BOB WATSON is a novel full of both sharp wit and genuine emotion." - Lou Berney, Edgar Award winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone
"Pays homage to all the worker bees stuck in corporate meetings. Goes awry with mistaken identity and mayhem." - Fort Worth Star-Telegram
"For those who have resented sitting through drawn-out, tedious work meetings, Greg Bardsley's second novel will immediately strike a chord. ... Through his colorful, cinematic lens, even the most mundane settings contain hilarity and humanity." - Shelf Awareness
"Bardsley renders the absurd credible in his hilarious 'Bob Watson.' ... One of the more zany and imaginative novels to arrive on bookstore shelves." - San Jose Mercury News
"A madcap, riotous adventure ... Bardsley excels at fast-paced, observational wit that manages to poke fun at our modern life while adding a little heart. For fans of Joshua Ferris, Sam Lypsite, and The Office" - Booklist
"Succeeds grandly in making Silicon Valley a place of intrigue and dangerous head cases and hard cases." - Booklist
"A funny expose of life on the darker side of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial world." - West Coast Live
"Sassy, great fun." - Frankfurter Allgemeine
"Does the ever-modernizing, depersonalizing corporate world make you want to stop and yell time out? Bardsley warns us to be careful what we wish for in a fresh satire that is both spot-on and hilarious." - Tim Dorsey, New York Times bestselling author of Florida Roadkill
"Anyone who's ever sat in a corporate meeting for more than ten minutes will revel in the glorious and wacky corporate take-down in The Bob Watson. There's a tender, touching story in here, too-peeking out and shining through all the laugh-out-loud madness." - Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Trouble with Lexie
"Greg Bardsley has a keen sense of the absurdity of everyday life, particularly Corporate America. But he gets the real things right, too, like all the messy stuff that makes us human. My advice: ditch your next meeting, find a coffee shop, and start reading. You won't regret it." - Matthew Norman, author of We're All Damaged and Domestic Violets
"A cold heart is beating in [Greg Bardsley's] prose, one that suspects there's nothing much good to say about people. Still...you can say it with a sly wink that lets everyone know we're all in on the same grim joke. Bardsley gives us the wink and delivers the black punchline." - Charlie Huston, best-selling author of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death and The Shotgun Rule [Ballantine], as well as the Henry Thompson trilogy and the Joe Pitt casebooks
"Bardsley's work will be around a long time. He forces you to remember. ... My prediction: As soon as the novels start rolling out, Bardsley will be as big as Palahniuk. But the critics will like him a lot more." - Anthony Neil Smith, author of Hogdoggin and Yellow Medicine [Bleak House]
"Greg Bardsley took all the sensible advice I ever gave him about writing sober, empathetic, kind-hearted fiction, chased it down the hallway, gave it an atomic wedgie, duct-taped it to the flagpole, sold nude pictures of its mom in the boys' locker room, and then blackmailed the principal into complicit silence. Damned if that wasn't exactly the right thing for him to have done. His fiction is tight, serrated, brutal, nine kinds of twisted, and funny as hell. Brace yourselves." - Doug Dorst, award-winning author of Alive in Necropolis [Riverhead]
Praise for Cash Out: "Flat-out funny prose that doesn't resort to parody is a rarity. Bardsley's clarity and eccentricity should be treasured." - Los Angeles Review of Books