The Core Dump

The Core Dump is the personal blog of Nic Lindh, a Swedish-American pixel-pusher living in Phoenix, Arizona.

[By Nic Lindh on Saturday, 16 August 2008]

The cheese and the damage done

Nic is not impressed with Who Moved My Cheese.

The powers that be at work decided that all minions had to read Who Moved My Cheese?, and since I like to read anyway, and have been low-grade curious about this book for a long time, I was a good boy and plowed through it.

Which took all of 15 minutes. Really. Without skimming.

According to the blurbs on the book itself, Who Moved My Cheese has changed the lives of countless people, and has shook more people than there are stars in the galaxy to the very core of their beings. We’ll get to that in a moment.

The book is really divided into two parts, the Who Moved My Cheese parable itself about two mice and two little people looking for cheese in a maze, and a “discussion” at a high school reunion between what I can only judge to be four stroke victims.

The parable itself is not bad—it cuts to the chase† and provides some food for thought, even though it’s glib and breathlessly optimistic.

But the discussion! Oh, the discussion! It’s all on the level of “Hey, I had no idea what to do and my life was going to hell, and I had no idea what was going on until you shared this wonderful, wonderful story with me and now I totally know what I have to do!”

Seriously, if you read this book and it changes your whole outlook, good for you. Glad you got value out of it. That being said, how about you turn off the TV, stop reading mouth-breather management books, and start reading grownup books? Please.

Also, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote.


†It took a lot of restraint to not use the word cheese instead of chase.

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