I recently had the chance to chance to read the book Punching In by Alex Frankel.  The premise is simple.  The author went under cover and worked at a series of entry level or manager trainee jobs at several national corporations (including the Gap, UPS and Enterprise Rent-a-Car) and recorded his experiences at each.  The stories generally follow the same pattern throughout.  Frankel gets a new job, goes through the training process while interacting with his fellow employees.  

This sameness is not a result of any flaw in the writer or the writing, but by the similarities of the experiences.  One of the points of the book is that there is an indoctrination process in these corporate giants, a process by which these major companies recruit and then sculpt their employees to fit a corporate model.  Given this sameness of structure, it is not surprising that similar characters arise in more than one company.  The most prevalent of these archetypes is the over-achieving lifer.   In each scenario, Frankel is either mentored by or interacts with an employee who has truly bought into the corporate process.  From the Denim expert at the Gap who makes him try on 30 pairs of jeans so he can tell the difference to the helpful Enterprise Rent-a-Car supervisor who is molding him to replace her as she moves up the ladder, the archetype of the perfect corporate employee is the most common character in the book.

With the indoctrination process being a major element of the book, Frankel spends considerable amounts of time in each chapter dealing with the hiring and training processes.  He covers each in minute detail, immersing the reader into the process.   This immersion allows the reader to experience exactly how this sort of training can draw in new workers to join the corporate culture.   Since Frankel is not afraid to state how he was being drawn in at times, it allows the readers to understand the lure of the team atmosphere.

The book moves seamlessly between anecdotes from Frankel’s experiences and background knowledge on the companies in question.  Overall, the book succeeds in giving the reader a view of what it is like on the entry level front lines of these major companies.