A long-suffering employee in a big corporation has summoned up thecourage to ask for a raise. But as he runs through the coming encounter inhis mind, his neuroses come to the surface: What#x19;s the best day to see theboss? What if he doesn#x19;t offer you a seat when you go into his office? Andshould you ask that tricky question about his daughter#x19;s illness? The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise is a hilarious account of an employeelosing his identity#x13;#x13;and possibly his sanity#x13;#x13;as he tries to put on themost acceptable face for the corporate world, with its rigid hierarchies andhostility to ideas and innovation. If he follows a certain course of action, sothis logic goes, he will succeed#x13;#x13;but, in accepting these conditions, are hisattempts to challenge his world of work doomed from the outset? Neurotic and pessimistic, yet endearing, comic and never less thanentertaining, Perec#x19;s Woody Allen-esque underling presents an acute andpenetrating vision of the world of office work, as pertinent today as it waswhen it was written in 1968.