• wage labour
• rat race
• language game

In this play by Georges Perec, a nameless employee decides to negotiate a pay raise. But in spite of his initial resolve, he takes a very circuitous path towards his goal: In countless variations, he goes through his route to the boss’ office, considering all eventualities that might thwart his endeavour along the company’s corridors like a complex maths problem. Is the department head even in his office? Is he free? Yes? No? Then what? Is he in a favourable mood? Does he have family troubles? Will his secretary accept the request?

Die Gehaltserhöhung (The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise) goes through all possible obstacles that prevent access to appropriate remuneration within a rigid structure of staff and hierarchies in a well-nigh endless, ludicrous attempt: from the employee’s own fear of the boss’ moods to apparently insurmountable administrative problems. And so the employee prefers to delay his undertaking again and again, until a better day, a better opportunity for placing his request might arise.

The French writer Georges Perec was a member of the Oulipo group (short for L’Ouvoir de littérature potentielle, in English: Workshop for Potential Literature), which included authors like Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino. During the 1960s, Oulipo attempted to expand language by applying playful formal constraints. Perec, too, imposed strict rules on his writing: In 1969, for example, he wrote “La Disparition (A Void)”, a novel that includes no words that had the letter e.

Die Gehaltserhöhung (The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise) is a highly rhythmical play about labour and alienation, about exhaustion and ageing. It is an enjoyable, absurd game of language that touches upon current issues of a constantly changing working world: How much is own work worth? What jobs are meaningful, which are useless, which have been made invisible? And what does the younger generation think about this topic?