Free to Do What?

The Ampersand Diaries: AT&T and the Life Lessons Learned from the Trenches of an American Icon is a contemporary narrative describing a professional journey through America's eminent corporation. It is a compilation of personal stories and underreported news items that recount compelling principles and simple truths about life at one of the world's largest employers; in the process, delivering vital lessons to people in every walk of life. Not to mention the commonalities between corporate life and life ecumenical.

Author John Spiller relives the wins and losses, triumphs and disasters that shaped nearly ten years of employment at AT&T. After working with commercial sales account managers, human resources diversity counselors, and corporate administrators, the result is a collection of anecdotes that reflect the life lessons of power and paradox, egotism and vulnerability, pain and transformation, and a brand new kind of courage. They also explain how AT&T's unenlightened executives--blinded by unchecked power and arrogance--failed at shaping relationships and improving the culture of their workplace; then felt the necessity to compensate themselves disproportionate to their performance. It caused their bureaucratic corporation, iconic as it was, to get exactly what it deserved in dramatic fashion. That is why The Ampersand Diaries, with its ability to put to rest speculations regarding AT&T's day-to-day operations and the dramatic events that deeply transform the lives of many of its employees, is sure to provoke intense emotions.

The book contains stories about how real men and women deal with the challenges of trying to succeed at America's largest communications corporation, and the life lessons the author learned in observing them. It is these hard-won lessons that have helped shaped his philosophies in business and being.

Ultimately, The Ampersand Diaries is more than a book about a failed telecom that reclaimed prominence. It is about you and me, and anyone who has ever toiled within the walls of corporate America. It is a book that relates to many people--including thousands of past and present AT&T employees, millions of consumers, countless shareholders, and, most importantly, the American public. Citizens have taken note that AT&T is often at the heart of what ails our society: anti-competitive business practices, illicit sales and marketing tactics, destruction of consumer privacy, poor diversity relations, opposition to a free and open internet, and an anti-labor history that includes continued downsizing and the outsourcing of desperately needed American jobs. Plus, the corporation's army of lobbyists who pressure lawmakers, allowing it all to happen.

Public relations represent a billion dollar industry that carries significant influence over government, media, and public opinion. And it is largely why AT&T is accustomed to describing everything about it in its own particular terms. The corporation's public relations executives are skillful wordsmiths whose duty it is to make sure their employer's deceit is observed and interpreted through rose-colored glasses.

Hence, The Ampersand Diaries was written to prove that AT&T's priorities and underlying intentions--seldom, if ever, public friendly--are not suited to lead a communications revolution in the United States. If our government continues to afford AT&T the unmitigated size and power it covets, it will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

This book will energize, empower, and mobilize readers who may be disgusted with the behavior of America's largest communications corporation; perhaps enough to fight back in protest. And it will provide much of the intellectual ammunition needed to help win this decade's most imperative social and political conflict: The war against AT&T's runaway corporate power.