The Last Ant

Book excerpt: Anton, called Ant, is an English teacher turned industrial technical writer. After a long, difficult corporate career, Ant is given an ant farm for his 50th birthday by his colleagues in the publication department of the Corporation. Soon everyone but Ant and his manager are laid off in preparation for the corporations relocation overseas. Watching the ants in the ant farm, Ant determines that the only way he can do the work of 15, as now required, is to model himself on the ants and work like a human ant. The Last Ant focuses on the plight of the highly skilled American corporate employee in the early years of the twent-first century. Ants experience is a result of corporate downsizing, overseas outsourcing, investor fraud, and lower standards in education. The Last Ant is an elegy for a technical writer whose striving for excellence is undermined by corporate and academic incompetence, ignorance, and stupidity.