» OVERHEARD IN THE OFFICE
$13, Perigee Trade
The "Overheard In ..." blog folks have built a veritable empire on recounting non-sequiturs and funny bon mots on the streets of New York, D.C. and elsewhere. For this book, their "spies" infiltrated the corporate world, compiling 240 pages of quotes. The musings range from nonsensical (clueless cube-dweller insisting that "dust comes from sunlight) to groan-worthy ("That's not Harry Potter, that's John Lennon"). Best read in small doses, a little at a time, not in one, overwhelming sitting, "Overheard" could provide final, irrefutable proof that all your co-workers really are as weird as you think. Unless, of course, you see yourself quoted.

But when Glen Baker, 47, moved to Fort Defiance, Va., he adopted a flexi-schedule so he could keep going into his Annandale office and attend his weekly evening advanced French conversation class with Jim Hodson through Fairfax County Public Schools Adult Continuing Education (FCPS ACE).

"I work [from home] Monday and Friday, and I'm in the office Tuesday through Thursday, which is great because I take the Wednesday night class," says Baker, who sought out a venue to practice his French 10 years ago when he still lived in Annandale — and a mere five miles from the class. "I actually built my schedule around this class."

The owner of several sweet businesses in Alexandria and the District spent 15 years with the Telecommunications Industry Association, lobbying Congress and moving up to become vice president for international affairs. Overseeing a staff of half a dozen, he traveled to Beijing, Prague, Brussels, Moscow and Sao Paolo to help American companies. Eventually, the constant travel, and resulting back problems and stunted social life, wore him down.

What brought him up was working in glass. Three blocks from the office was a design studio called Mosaic Makers. "It reminded me of classical Greek and Roman art," Nelson says. Imagining ancient friezes, he crafted 3-D, 2-foot-square wall hangings.

"It was time-consuming and messy," Nelson says with a grin. After the studio closed, he tried working at home — but papier-mache, clay and grout were tough to handle, and "there were shards of glass all over the house." At $2,000 to $4,000 each, too, sales were few. Galleries were difficult to deal with even before they kept half the proceeds. What was a newfound artist to do?

Change materials and venues, to start. He found a much lighter painting surface in Mylar, the stuff of fancy balloons. "One objective of starting as an artist later in life is wanting to do something unique," explains Nelson, now 51. "The light goes through the translucent paint and bounces out, so it's bright and bold and colorful."

So what's the deal with the rock-bottom price (relatively speaking, of course)? Everyone that runs the restaurant — from the waiters to the sous chef — is a student.

The entire staff at Culinaire Restaurant is made up of trainees who are earning Bachelors and Associates degrees in areas like Culinary Arts, and Baking and Pastry, through the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Washington. Some have had years of practice working in restaurants; others are first-timers to the fine dining and service scenes. For all of them, the restaurant management experience counts for a semester's worth of credit in a cooking class.

"I like space planning and layout and how things work and flow -- the technical part of interior design as well as the useful, aesthetic side," says Pasek. At Jennifer Gilmer Kitchen & Bath in Bethesda, she's surrounded by detailed binders on two dozen current renovation projects.

Pasek didn't envision a focus on kitchens back at Washington state's Whitman College, where she majored in sociology. She worked in human resources and owned a personal-errand company in Rhode Island, then moved to Gaithersburg with her husband. She became a teacher's aide at two elementary schools and a child-care center.

"I loved the children I worked with," she says, "but I always had a passion for design and color and art." That suggested serious career change.

But what to do? Pasek turned to a career counselor. Graphic design and interior design were possibilities, but with the latter Pasek worried that she'd be "jumping on the bandwagon" led by TV shows about redoing houses in two days.

But the more Gardner combed through job listings, the more three words kept popping out at him: Project Management Professional, better known as PMP. Gardner quickly deduced that companies weren't content with candidates boasting just field experience. They wanted applicants with a credential. "I didn't have certification, but the market was valuing that," Gardner says.

Eager to get some bites when he sent out his resume, Gardner, who has a bachelor's degree in business management from George Mason University, decided to take the exam that would earn him those three letters after his name. He Googled prep courses and found the PMP Certification prep course at Fairfax County Public Schools Adult and Community Education (FCPS ACE).

Lam has a virtual office. The idea isn't new — it's been around since the 1980s — but in recent years, the concept has grown rapidly, with companies opening new locations all the time.

Here's how it works: For a monthly fee, you get a mailing address, someone to sign for your packages, a receptionist to forward your calls to a land line, cellphone or Blackberry, and other goodies — usually access to a conference room or work area, a copier and coffee. There are as many types of virtual offices as there are businesses, from nurturing, collaborative environments to showy, high-class buildings and impeccably decorated spaces. For these services, you'll pay from $75 to $300 per month.

Drawing on their experiences as co-founders and owners of New York City culinary public relations firm YC Media, Friedman and Yorio have created a closet industry of sorts. They dispensed their lively, femme-centric tips about how women can control their own career destinies in their new book, "The Girl's Guide to Kicking Your Career into Gear: Valuable Lessons, True Stories, And Tips for Using What You've Got (A Brain!) to Make Your Worklife Work For You" ($24, Broadway).

Combining their own fresh-from-the-trenches ideas with insights gleaned from interviews with more than 100 other successful businesswomen, they've produced a guide brimming with tips and techniques for slaying fears, overcoming stereotypes, and tackling other challenges women face when navigating the work world. We spoke with Friedman and Yorio to find out how women can learn to work it.

On the other extreme is your co-worker who clears her workstation off every day, spraying it with Dust Be Gone before putting her color-coordinated folders in neat, symmetrical piles. You know -- the employee-of-the-month type whose cubicle looks like a furniture showroom, or worse, a spaceship cabin?

From ginormous federal agencies to teensy nonprofits, D.C. offices overflow with workers who keep their desks either shockingly messy or robotically clean. Is falling into either camp good for your career or work output?

Career experts Theo Theobald and Cary Cooper, authors of "Desk Detox: Declutter Your Life and Mind" (Wiley, $20), believe that slobs need to clean up their acts if they want to be truly productive. In their book, they go into how a mountain of tilting paperwork might be the first sign that other areas of a your life are going to topple into chaos.

After catching Potomac Fever as a college intern, Cook spent about 15 years as a policy analyst for such clients as multinational corporations, law and consulting firms, and financial companies. When international work and travel dried up, leaving generic domestic relations, "I started to lose steam," he says.

Besides not knowing what to do next, Cook had doubts about changing at all. "How can I leave all this?" he mused to an old friend.

Replied the friend, "You have 30 years of career left. Look at it that way."