THE EMPLOYEE by Jacques Sternberg

Translated by Matt Seidel

Does this sound familiar? You rock up to a work meeting five minutes late. You stand at the door, scared to step inside. What sort of hellish arse-kicking will your boss serve up in front of all your colleagues? You reach for the doorknob and time stands still.

In Jacques Sternberg’s 1958 absurdist workplace masterpiece, that frozen moment stretches across an infinite loop of personal horrors, from childhood trauma to any number of absolutely bonkers job crises. Not that you’ll follow half of it. Sternberg delivers his unnamed narrator’s complete psychological unravelling through a rapid fire deluge of comic non sequiturs. To be honest, I rarely had any idea what was going on but often caught myself laughing at the sheer audaciousness (and sometimes abject silliness) of the whole caper.

Seventy years after it was first published, The Employee still feels fresh and relevant which, come to think of it, is deeply depressing. To read it is to wander the halls of The Stanley Parable (IYKYK), feeling the hamster wheel spin beneath your feet, questioning what the hell you’re doing and wondering if it’s all going to end with a mocking boom tish.

The Employee by Jacques Sternberg (Tr. Matt Seidel)
Wakefield Press, 2025
134 pages