{"product_id":"2940148532507","title":"Murphy's Law","description":"Patrick Murphy, husband and loving father of two young boys, had been a successful Marketing V.P. at a large corporation in New Haven for over ten years.  In his world, it seemed that the rules for success were pretty simple:  Do your job better than anyone else, make sure your boss likes you, don’t screw up, don’t make waves and everything will be alright.  You'll be safe and nobody will bother you.  For Patrick, both at home and at work, life was good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen, one sunny Monday morning in September, without warning, a shocking reality that thousands of white male Baby Boomers are hit with every day shattered Patrick’s life…he was fired.  Just like that, with no explanation or justification beyond a couple of halfhearted, legally acceptable excuses about headcount and downsizing along with a bunch of feel-good platitudes that served no real purpose, he was unemployed.  In a matter of minutes, Patrick, like too many other husbands and fathers his age, was confronted with a new reality:  He was expendable.  All those stories about restructuring, cutbacks, and layoffs became real.  Only this time it wasn’t the other guy who was out of work with a family to feed and a pile of bills waiting to be paid.  It was Patrick Murphy.  And nobody gave a damn.  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFrom the first page of Murphy’s Law, to the last, we live through Patrick’s solitary, consuming search for explanations, solutions and self-validation while he tries to solve the biggest problem he’s ever faced in his life…finding a job.  Yet through it all, in an exquisite case of bravado and denial, he tells no one what happened…not his friends, not even his wife. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMurphy’s Law follows Patrick Murphy over the next five days as he first attempts to make sense of his situation, then tries to figure out what to do next—how to explain everything to his wife and family, how to tell his friends what happened and, most vital, how to go about getting a new job and bringing in a paycheck.  It graphically describes what he sees, hears, does and feels.  Most importantly, it ventures deep into his mind, his thoughts and his emotions, exposing his worst fears, uncertainties, frustrations and confusion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePatrick learns how little support his previous employer, his boss, his co-workers, his friends, or anyone else, will give him.  Through a professional outplacement service, he meets other unemployed executives who share their experiences and insights with him, leaving him with a new, frightening knowledge of how unprepared for all of this he really is and, in just a few minutes on a sunny September day, how bleak his future has become.  Without any real answers as to why he was fired or what he might do next, Patrick keeps his secret, choosing to go on as if nothing has changed, alone and by himself, until he comes up with a solution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePatrick Murphy is as isolated, frightened and confused as one person can ever be.  \u003cbr\u003eDangerously bordering on a complete mental breakdown, he careens through the week on a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows, one minute denying that anything is wrong, the next grasping at straws.  Finally, just as his luck seems to have changed for the better and he finds a way to not only reverse his fortunes but actually benefit from his misfortunes, fate deals him one more major, cruel setback.  One from which he cannot ever recover.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePunctuated by dry humor and touches of raw reality, Murphy’s Law exposes life beneath the veneer of polite corporate society.  It introduces the reader to the people, politics and backbiting that goes on every day and the real truth that everyone from the CEO on down is expendable.  Patrick’s story is a reality check, a must-read for anyone who thinks their life in corporate America is secure or who wants a peek into the lives of those who, however temporarily, live the good life in America’s suburbs and occupy the corner offices of its major corporations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Mona Monaghan-Kelliher Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47084354404592,"sku":"2940148532507","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940148532507_p0.jpg?v=1763703766","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940148532507","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}