NONFICTION - June 7, 1992

CRAZY BOSSES by Stanley Bing (William Morrow: $20; 272 pp.) As a self-employed person, I have the ultimate crazy boss: I rarely give myself a vacation, offer no employee benefits whatsoever, don’t have a health plan, and think nothing of asking myself to work nights or weekends at no extra pay. Still, in the Stanley Bing pantheon of nutball big shots, I am a piker. The bosses he’s writing about are certifiable--and since they aren’t about to change, and will likely not be deposed, or if they are will be replaced by others of their ilk, he’s going to show the people who have to work for them a way out. Or more properly, a way around: Bing figures there’s really one cosmic crazy boss, who at any point behaves in one of five equally despicable ways, but once identified, he can be circumvented without loss of one’s sanity, or, more important in these recessionary times, one’s job. Everything about this book is maniacally funny, a literary coup in and of itself, given the essentially depressing nature of the news--which is that the acquisitiveness of the ‘80s, fueled by crazy management, wrecked America’s corporate structure and as much as guaranteed that corporateland will be a strange place to work for years to come. Read Bing if you’ve had days when you wanted to kill your boss--or worse, if your boss got to you first and what you’re killing is time in the unemployment line.