Not Safe For Work: Author of the viral essay 'My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer'

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You will work whenever you are asked to, you’ll do whatever you’re asked to, you won’t complain, you’ll wait your turn for promotion and most importantly for the females; you’ll stay looking pretty. From my perch outside my boss’s office, I saw how little my personal opinion mattered, how interchangeable and dispensable I was. I wanted to know what the characters were feeling and what their next move was going to be and I think that was done really well. So when you land a job in television, you're ready for anything: pulling all-nighters, leaning on your powerful mother's contacts, keeping your boss happy whatever - and whoever - the cost.

I told myself that someday, when I had enough power that people cared what I had to say, I would make a stand for what was right. Only after the fact did it occur to me to wonder why a male executive would ever think it appropriate to give a female employee a goodbye kiss at the end of the work day, regardless of where on the face his lips landed. When rumours of an assault start to circle the office, and your close friend confesses her own disturbing experience, you know there is plenty to gain from staying silent. I don’t know how the daughter (I keep saying daughter as she was unnamed in the book) kept her patience and was mostly able to stay polite and courteous as I think I would have cut ties very early on.I was a teeny tiny bit disappointed with the open ending but hopefully it means that there may be more to come as I would love to read more about these characters and their lives. We urgently need to develop avenues for conversations about all the behaviour that lives in this grey space. I thought it was so insightful, even though it was about a subject that as a female, we can all relate to, we all understand and a lot of us have probably had some experience of.

I understood, in theory, that Hollywood was a hotbed of sexism, racism and unchecked egos, but I had grand ambitions of making change from the inside. When whispers start to circle that your office might have ‘a bit of a rape problem,’ and your close friend confesses her own unsettling encounter, you know there is plenty to gain from staying silent, and all too much to lose through speaking out. I thought it was important that even characters that were very in touch what what was acceptable or not fell into that trap. Though I’m passed that in my life now, this book brought back all the feelings of realising that the world is hard, you have no idea what you’re doing and you question everything you thought you knew about the people in your life.

Although I don’t think she would have described herself in this way, I thought that she was extremely strong willed and she had a firm understanding of her own boundaries. I heard sexist and racist comments and fumed silently, exchanging outraged instant messages with other assistants. You know, the kind of uncle who spends a little too much time with the young women and gives goodbye kisses that land too close to the mouth.

If the bar for tolerable behaviour was on the floor before – no, make that underground – then now, it’s hovering just above floor level. I do not miss any of the above, but I did appreciate the reminder and the confirmation that it happens to most of us. Please get in touch and we will do our best to source your book, no matter how unusual or specialist. It’s an ugly truth, and one that’s difficult to discuss in the nuanced way it deserves, but women are often better foot soldiers of the patriarchy than men.So visceral is the narrator's voice that every time I opened the book it felt like sliding into uncomfortable heels. I loved that the ambiguous ending flipped things onto you and made you think about what you would do if you were ever faced with an unfair, difficult situation. Here, the former Hollywood assistant and current director of book-to-film development at a literary agency reflects on the horrifying behaviour she witnessed as a twentysomething – and how little has actually changed in the five years since the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Not Safe for Work is definitely one of the harder-hitting books I’ve read in recent times, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it.The nuances of our lead character’s co-dependent, majoritively toxic, mother-daughter relationship are also looked at in depth and reveal how much this affects all areas of both of their lives. We also need to stop blindly applauding powerful women in Hollywood as if their success is inherently “good for women” or an illustration of the system working in a more egalitarian way. Sometimes it’s easy to preach about what you would do in a theoretical situation, until you are facing it head on.