Snow job

(Upstart) - Times are tough enough for the dot-coms without some jackass like me around to criticize and mock their every move, but former “Late Show with David Letterman” writer Rodney Rothman upped the ante considerably with his November 27 New Yorker magazine piece “My Fake Job,” a brutally comic look at his three-week masquerade as a “junior project manager'' at an unnamed Silicon Alley Internet consulting and Web design firm.

Here’s the deal: Walking into the office unannounced one Monday morning, Rothman somehow managed to secure a cubicle and phone extension with no questions asked, proceeding from there to fully ingratiate himself into the office culture, even going so far as to receive fake business calls. No thanks to thinly disguised details like a kitchen-area poster reading “Feeling Stressed? Join Us for Lunchtime Yoga!” and company t-shirts emblazoned with the message "May the E-force Be with You," the mystery firm in question was soon outed as Manhattan-based Luminant Worldwide. Even CEO Jim Corey admitted as much in a company-wide e-mail, later posted to the Vault.com site, which also detailed new, if not entirely visionary, security suggestions like “Introduce yourself to unfamiliar people” (adding “Hey, it is also a great way to make some friends”) and “Don't allow unfamiliar people to follow you through doors with secure access.”

Lord knows we here at Upstart like to have our fun, and when I first read of Rothman’s hi-jinks, I have to admit I was impressed, and more than a little jealous that he’d pulled off such a grand-scale prank. But in the days since the article exploded, new details have emerged that shed an entirely new light on Rothman’s story. For starters, the guy isn’t nearly as ballsy as he might seem—his mother works at Luminant, a major point conspicuously absent from “My Fake Job.” More problematic is that he blatantly falsified other details, such as receiving a body massage from a co-worker. All of a sudden, the joke’s not so funny anymore.

The ethics involved here are just plain ugly. Undercover journalism is certainly a cornerstone of this profession, but Rothman isn’t a journalist; creative license is one way out, admittedly, but his story wasn’t presented as fiction, either. In the end, Rothman ended up scamming The New Yorker and its readership as much as he scammed Luminant, but what’s the point to any of it—to make everyone involved look foolish? And don’t even get me started on Rothman’s mother’s role in the whole fiasco and the nasty questions it raises about employee loyalty.

The New Yorker’s already run an apology, which reads in part, “The magazine does not disguise details or mix fact and fiction without informing the reader (not even in a comic piece like this one), and we sincerely regret the error.” Meanwhile, Luminant is threatening legal action against Rothman, but the damage to its public image may already be irrevocable—the company was hardly thriving prior to the writer’s search-and-destroy mission. It recently laid off 25% of its workforce, and now there’s the perception that the bosses are so inept, they don’t even recognize an obvious ringer in their midst. Taking a wider-angle view, what will readers of “My Fake Job” think about this industry as a whole? That all of these insurgent companies with their high-tech products, take-no-prisoners attitudes and cutting-edge business plans are ultimately so clueless that they don’t even know who should and who shouldn’t be in the office each day? That lunchtime yoga and stupid t-shirts are the norm? It’s no wonder investors are turning tail.

What I really don’t understand is just why Rothman felt compelled to gild the lily in the first place: Every place I’ve ever worked is the subject for a potentially great story—every office culture is a goldmine for bizarre characters, freakish behavior and twisted social mores, all eminently ripe for satire without changing a single key detail. Like the adage says, truth is stranger than fiction, and if there’s one thing any writer owes his readership–whether it’s fact or fiction, drama or comedy–it’s the truth. It’s not always pretty, but at least it’s real.

Senior Editor Jason Ankeny can be reached at jason_ankeny@intertec.com. His mother does not work here.