THE SURVIVOR'S GUIDE TO WORK

Saturday 04 October 1997 23:02 BST
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Disgruntled styles itself "The Business Magazine For People Who Work For A Living". What it would really like as a subtitle is "Take This Job And Shove It". You can almost hear the hiss of steam being let off as the pages download: heed the warning about strong language. Disgruntled is at its most pungent in its agony column. "Grunty" advises a postal worker who complains of sexual harassment after sleeping with her boss, also female, to "stick to licking stamps".

What many upscale Netizens might really find offensive, though, are the articles supporting trade unions. Unusually, too, this is a site for people who get their hands dirty. A posting from "Babyjane", for example, describes the stresses she suffered from operating a particular assembly line machine, and asks for comments from workers who have encountered similar difficulties.

The core readership presumably logs on at the office, and for them Disgruntled provides an emergency button in the form of the "Boss" icon. If a superior approaches, clicking on it opens a bogus balance sheet headed "Our Mission Is To Increase Shareholder Value". Once the manager has gone away, there are links to sites for "goofing off". But the bulk of the magazine - and the number of articles shows the well of demand that it has tapped - is devoted to the serious business of surviving in the modern workplace. Although it may not be of practical use outside America, there is a wealth of information about the formal aspects of employment. There's also a host of links, spanning sites from the Cable Worker Underground to Forbes magazine.

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