Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

This audiobook was given to me, along with a number of other coping-with-trying-times resources, by one of my many middle managers in the midst of a merger. With an open mind I gave it a shot. What did I have to loose, except my job?

This book is an over-simplistic metaphor for unexpected change that is beyond one's control, in which "cheese" is a symbol of something you want, ie: happiness, security, financial resources. The message the authors attempt to convey is that your future, success, security, and ultimately happiness is within your control. While this may be PARTLY true, the tone of the childlike story is so condescending (an unintended byproduct of the tale's simplification, I suspect), one could easily get the feeling it was penned by the committee representing CEOs Happily Unopposed to Bad Behavior (CHUBB).

The book amplifies feelings of rejection and betrayal by the faceless "Cheese Removers". It raises many questions like, "What if I was counting on that cheese for future use", but offers no answer other than you've got to go out and find more "cheese" for yourself, even though everything you had was just taken from you for no apparent reason. To me (and many others) this was not an inspiring read. It was painful.

This book was destined to be a best seller because, no doubt, it can be ordered by the box-load by those anticipating removing others' cheese. Sure, the message is a fine one, it's the delivery that flat-out stinks.


Where are my sunglasses?   September 23, 2000
 45 out of 54 found this review helpful

I cannot believe this book is number 1. After reading it, I needed to go find my sunglasses because I had just been struck by a blinding flash of the obvious. If you need an allegory about mice in a maze to lead you to clarity in life and work, this is the book for you. However, if you want to save yourself a few bucks, here is my summary: People have a comfort zone. Sometimes you have to leave that comfrot zone. Change is hard but change is good. Be adaptable.

We need Spencer Johnson to tell us this? With mice? The extended metaphor that we are all rats in a maze (which, people seem to identify with though by these reviews) gets old fast. If you need this book - go buy aesop's fables for some more deep revelations like the one in this book.

This is number 1? OMG.


Hem and Haw - Where are They Now?   October 8, 2004
 45 out of 52 found this review helpful

Who Moved the Cheese? The title question is never addressed, as if the "cheese" was swept away by a natural disaster, rather than through the conscious decisions of people in power - people who benefit from those decisions. In real life, we know very well who took the "cheese:" fat cat CEO's paying themselves astronomical salaries while exporting jobs to India and China. The purpose of the book is to distract workers from the obvious. The underpaid and the downsized are urged to just pick up and find opportunity elsewhere, without questioning the overall circumstance - as if God Himself stole the "cheese."

I've taken the liberty of writing new ending to the book. The two mice, Hurry and Scurry, who uncomplainingly went looking for new cheese, are now on their third McJob in three years. Hurry is now a barista at Starbucks. Scurry is a nurses' aide. They share an two-room apartment in Brooklyn with a couple of other underemployed mice, since none of them can afford rent on his own. Haw, the more enterprising of the two "littlepeople," has been temping for a while. The hourly wage is good, but he's worried, because he has no health benefits, and his 401(k) is in the tank. The grudging, resentful Hem, having been convinced by Fox News that the federal government is at fault, has joined the Littlepeople Militia. They are stockpiling guns and chemical fertilizer.