book | speaker | consultant | podcast | someone else's dad | about | news & reviews
Latest News!
Flip-Flops & Microwaved Fish was awarded the Bronze Medal at the 2021 Axiom Business Book Awards, honoring this year's best business books, their authors, and publishers!
The book was also one of the ten finalists in career books by 2020 Foreward Reviews!
Hear Peter Interviewed!
The Reviews
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Flip-Flops and Microwaved Fish: Navigating the Dos and Don'ts of Workplace Culture by Peter Yawitz is a non-fiction self-help book with practical advice for twenty-somethings who are about to embark on their first journey into the professional world. Yawitz dishes out advice as 'Someone else's dad' and covers the whole gamut of topics, everything from what to wear and what to say (hint: knock it off with the “literally” and the “yeah, no”), to work presentations, business trips, and managing the managers. The whole compilation is written in a straightforward, informative, and witty narrative...just like the kind of advice you'd get from a kind uncle or someone else's dad.
Flip-Flops and Microwaved Fish is the book I got to read twenty years too late. There is a great deal I've lost track of and even more that I didn't even know—partly because they weren't issues when I was climbing the ladder, and partly because nobody ever told me. Peter Yawitz sets the record straight and does so effectively and with a lot of panache. My favorite chapter was on writing emails, particularly having just received one today from a utility company that contained a smiling emoji. Shall I send him a copy of this book? You betcha. I'll also be giving one to my teen daughter as required reading, and believe this to be an excellent resource for anyone who is about to, or knows someone who is about to enter the workforce for the first time. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by Angela McQuay of ForewordReviews.com
Starting your first job out of college is tough, as Peter Yawitz knows. Helping young people to navigate their new worlds of employment with plenty of humor, Flip-Flops & Microwaved Fish is written with the wise but sarcastic tone of a favorite uncle or a dad who’s a whole lot cooler than your own.
Tackling issues that range from the importance of body language to writing correctly and eating well with others, this text is the employee manual that young adults won’t actually get from their employers, but that they are likely to be in desperate need of. Full of example work scenarios, helpful charts, and write-in letters from young people in need, the book touches on nearly everything that a young adult needs to succeed in new environments of peers and managers.
Though confronting contemporary issues that range from equality fights to the challenges of AI, the text’s advice is of the sort that never goes out of style. It includes avoiding clichés and being more direct in communication, as well as the technical issues that people face when entering the workforce. Social media, video conferencing, and composing professional text messages are all considered, alongside rules for conduct in presentations and the right ways to handle office politics.
With a bright, open tone that’s suited to its audience, the book is packed with useful information. Relevant, insightful, and useful no matter what type of work environment a person is entering, the book’s chapters are easy to scan for the needed information, with examples aplenty to present new perspectives on common work dilemmas.
Both informative and humorous, Flip-Flops and Microwaved Fish is the go-to etiquette guide for the new generation.