"The funniest book about government work since Catch-22—if Catch-22 had a reply-all problem and a forty-year-old server with opinions about PowerPoint."

Evan Calder took a government job because he believed he could make a difference.

That was four years and fourteen failed project plans ago.

Now he spends his mornings decoding contradictory emails from leadership ("Be bold. Also, don't do anything without approval."), his afternoons in meetings about meetings about meetings, and his evenings wondering why he still owns a leather portfolio his parents bought him when they thought he was going to change the world.

His modernization project is blocked by Security for reasons that are "potentially potential." Legal has rewritten his requirements into 62 pages of sentences that contradict themselves. The Budget office thinks "appropriations" is a type of luggage. And the contractors just billed 387 hours for a blank slide.

Meanwhile, a coworker named Victima has been escalating the same grievance since 2009—and no one can remember what it was about.

When a three-sentence directive from a political appointee kills his project overnight, Evan faces a choice: comply, quit, or do something unauthorized, inadvisable, and just crazy enough to work.

Sisyphus.gov is a sharp, laugh-out-loud satirical novella about pushing boulders uphill in a system designed to roll them back down. For fans of Office Space, The Office, Veep, and anyone who has ever attended a meeting that should have been an email.