All Up in Your Bizness pokes fun at the idiosyncracies many of us have faced in the world of business. Author Julianna Newland uses her thirty-plus years experience of working in business to tell stories and give advice about what to do and what not to do when working in your stereotypical business environment. One of the quirky things about the book is that Newland has a muse who she describes all throughout the book. I have to admit this was a bit odd but she claims her muse is the “source for my creative writing.” The book is broken down into little sections rather than chapters which made it feel like there was no real order to the stories and anecdotes. The passages were quite entertaining, however, and talked about everything from pecking order to working from home during the pandemic to parking spots. Newland has also included some creative cocktail recipes throughout the book, naming them after business terms such as “Networking” and “Think Outside the Box.” Two of her bartender friends from an Indianapolis restaurant came up with these delicious-sounding libations and I decided that I may need to try some of these when I am feeling like being creative.
Some parts of the book were funny: “Do you need a nice quiet space to do your work? Sucker!” (under “The open office concept” section) and some tried to be funny but fell flat: “stating you are in the Witness Protection Program” (this one was used a few times in the book). My two favorite sections of the book come one after the other: “BMW” and “The kiss-ups.” I liked these sections because they were completely relatable. BMW stands for bitchers, moaners, and whiners. Now, most of us in any industry whether it be in an office or a retail setting know that there are the BMWs. And aren’t they just the most annoying people? But as Newland says, “Trust me, there’s little you can do about it, short of peeing in their chair.” We also know about kiss-ups. As Newland says it, “Face it—nobody likes the kissups, except the boss, and not always.” This made me chuckle.
Overall, All Up in Your Bizness is an entertaining book that is not meant to be taken too seriously. I thought the descriptions of the muse were a bit odd and thrown in spots that were really random in the book. I would have liked to see the book organized into chapters with sections under them so the book didn’t seem like one big scattered scrapbook of stories. Other than that, this book is fun, lighthearted, and will make you LOL (sometimes).
