The boss looked like a pig, his secretary was a brainless blonde, the computer geek was a sexual pervert and the senior broker was a chronic drunk.
The tension they supposedly created in an insurance company was so distressing that Bruno Perara (46) turned to violent fantasy and wiped them all out in a novel called Little Murders Among Partners.
The book, inspired by his workmates’ characters, cost him his job after selling only 858 copies — half of them bought by the company’s 450 staff. But the author, an administrator, has ended up £50 000 richer.
The money was awarded by a mediation court in Brittany for unfair dismissal, after it ruled that the unique case of literary office rage could not be blamed for internal conflicts at the French Defence and Protection Company.
When the book was published last year several employees, including the chairman, began legal action, claiming to have recognised themselves behind the invented names for staff who were supposedly sleeping together, putting their hands in the till or taking too many sickies.
”The workers were portrayed with violence and nastiness,” the company’s lawyer, Myriam Adjerad, said. ”No one wanted to work with Mr Perara any more. The caricatures were insulting and amounted to virulent personal attacks.”
But Perara told the mediators that he had issued a disclaimer at the front of the book, saying the story was pure fiction, and ”there had never been any murders in the company”.
The mediators said the company had not suffered any loss, because sales had risen after the book was published, and Perara had not committed a serious enough fault to be sacked without proper notice.
Perara is preparing a second book, inspired by the obscure world of the French mediation system. – Guardian Unlimited Â