I started this book not really knowing what to expect as I had not read any of the hype surrounding the book and only read what was written as reviews on the back of the book. That in itself is never a good place to start if you want a balanced perspective but I think I agree with most of what was written "back there" on the cover.
I likened the beginning of the book to a written example of an episode of Seinfeld, where it's funny but it isn't really about anything - just caricatures of offensive people's personalities. Frankly for the first 80 or so pages I was finding myself insulted, annoyed and offended with childish pranks, homophobic comments, spiteful spying/gossiping and racist slurs from borderline sociopaths who worked in the office. And then it dawned on me that this bothered me so much because I had lived it myself; I was taking it personally. I couldn't disagree that it is indeed an accurate portrayal of working in an office.
But then as outlined from the opening quote of the book I expected that one of themes of the story would be of belonging. As a work group, in high school cliques, in relationships; it becomes the purpose to make seemingly nasty, elitist people seem more human by the end of the book. And then surprisingly (deftly?) I thought the author moved the emphasis from the personalities into an interesting story that intrigued me. For the rest of the 300 or so pages I was submerged in the story and read with interest.
Sure, in my opinion there are traces of elitism and entitlement throughout the story but not enough to detract from the overall themes. It is well written and funny and the characters are spot-on accurate.
I believe you might find the humour in this story if:

a) You have lived it but are now removed from it and/or
b) If you have never worked in such a setting

I believe you will take offense in this story if:

a) You have lived it and still work in a similar setting hence subject to this oppression regularly and/or
b) If you don't get the irony or the caricatures presented

I would recommend this book.

First of all, what you read on the back cover is nothing near what the actual book is about. For something that is reviewed as being ‘hilarious’ I barely cracked a smile. Maybe it’s just me, but I find nothing hilarious about breast cancer, the kidnap and murder of a child, the death of a co-worker, a married man pressuring his office lover to have an abortion and the list goes on. If people behaved in real life the way they behave in this book, they would be charged with harassment and/or fired. People just don’t act like these character do. And not one of them (and there are a lot of characters in this book) had any sort of redeeming quality or likeability. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

I've worked in agencies so long, I figured this book would offer a harmless guffaw -- a 'yup, that's what it's like' kind of laugh.

I wasn't entirely prepared for the fact that, while this book is indeed hilarious, it also made me want to crawl into bed and never go to work (at an agency) again. The .com bubble and burst era is still a pretty gut-wrenching memory and the descriptions of trickled lay-offs and being 'walked spanish down the hall' brings that seeping anxiety right back. So do the many tracts that question the ethics and lack of greater purpose behind the BDA priorities.

I loved the book. Just be prepared, you agency-creatures, for the unfunny side of self-recognition.

This novel repeatedly generates flashes of uncanny description for the doldrums of office life, universal to all residents of the cube farm, even inside the completely unmatched worklife of advertising creatives.

Ferris' style feels like mental floss, but hids much substance. Read this book and discover all the people you know who are forced to live a life as an office worker. You'll see characters you haven't seen since high school, since unversity. You'll find Tom Mota and learn to love and hate him.

Then We Came to the End is told in first person plural (“We were fractious and overpaid…We loved free bagels in the morning”) giving it a feel somewhere between water-cooler gossip and the chants of a Greek chorus. This novel is a dead-on description working in corporate America during the boom of Y2K and the subsequent burst of the tech bubble. Ferris captures the delight in the silliness of wasting time at white-collar jobs (playing celebrity death watch and sneaking to Starbucks) but also the boredom of it (feigning work so you don’t look expendable to your employers while wondering if you should instead be saving the world at an NGO.) The setting is original, the style unusual, but not at all cumbersome, and, though the characters may seem hard to keep track of at first, they are engaging. This is a very enjoyable read.

I first saw a review for this book in a magazine and was inexplicably motivated to read it. I bought it with the expectations of a fun and easy read, however, as I became further involved in this book I found myself attached to the depth of the characters. I was truly amazed at Ferris' ability to describe dismal, melancholic work lifestyles in a humurous way. If you are someone who spends 45 hours of your week in an office better thought as a circus, you will appriciate this read.