I found Bartelby to be a humorous story. The story is narrated by a boss who has no name, so right away we know that he does not have much authority. Basically, he lets his employees do whatever they want to and does not use his authority to get what he wants out of them.
The story started off with Bartelby being one of the best writers. However, when he is asked to make copies of something, he simply replies with “I’d prefer not to.” Since the boss shows no authority, he allows Bartelby to get away with it, angering some of the other workers. As the story progresses, we find out that Bartelby prefers not to do much of anything besides write and starts to make the workplace like his home.
Although the boss is tempted to fire Bartelby, he cannot bring hims
I believe that this story was interesting because usually you have the insane boss followed by the pleading employee, however, this story “flipped the script” on everything.
elf to do it. He feels bad for him at first because he feels that there is something wrong with him. He tried to approach Bartelby as a friend and ask him about his life and where he comes from, but is answered with “I’d prefer not to talk about that right now.” As time goes on, Bartelby becomes more and more like a hermit even though he is the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night. He stays in his office all day and does not even leave to get lunch, rather he pays Gingernut to go get his food for him.
The boss now sees that Bartelby is not going to work out
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