Get Your 'Tina Fey' Glasses

by Working Girl One

Most of my commute last week was spend reading Tina Fey's Bossypants. If you happened to be on Metro North (oh yeah, I moved...more on that later) last week and noticed a girl in stitches reading an iPad and nearly spitting her coffee on it, you probably saw me.

Rather than providing a full review of her memoir, I thought I'd just share just a few of my favorite quotes. Because, really, if you like Tina Fey (and who doesn't?), you'll love, love, love Bossypants...even if the cover grosses you out a bit.

There were so many gems of advice sprinkled throughout the hilarious stories of Tina Fey's life that I nearly highlighted the entire book. These are a few of many career-related nuggets that I just had to share.

"Some people say 'Never let them see you cry.' I say, if you're so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone."

"Contrary to what I believed as a little girl, being the boss almost never involves marching around, waving your arms, and chanting, "I am the boss! I am the boss!'"

"This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel like you are in competition with one another...Don't be fooled. You're not in competition with other women. You're in competition with everyone."

"So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: 'Is this person in between me and what I want to do?' If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way."

And finally, this might be my favorite because we all know someone like this at work:

"There was the Program Director, who talked exclusively in nonsense business language 'We are attempting to pro-activate the community by utilizing a series of directives intended to maximate communicative agreeance.'"