Dear Joyce: I've been working for two years in a dot-com company. Perhaps it's all the long hours and token pay, but I'm tired of waiting for my options ship to come in. How do I escape grunt gulch? -- W.L.L.

News reports claim cubicles of people are reevaluating their Net company jobs and moving from clicks to bricks, figuring the Old Economy turf offers more stability -- and cash right now, rather than future promises of financial rewards. Further encouraging a return to traditional button-downs: Old Economy companies are copycating the dot-comes by offering stock options and shedding suits for Dockers and T-shirts.

But some things don't change -- and one is each generation's desire for self-actualization, success (whatever that means to you) and escape from cubical purgatory to a better, more positive work life. Each generation has to learn to work the economy, however evolving the economy may be.

College professors Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal have teamed to produce a book for this decade's seekers: "Escape From Cluelessness: A Guide for the Organizationally Challenged -- An Antidote to Cynicism, Confusion, Corporate Doublespeak and Other Ailments of Today's Workplace'' (Amacom, $25, 800-714-6395).

"Escape'' is a tour book -- a tour of other people's ideas and concepts, presented in a clear and entertaining way with loads of good stories illustrating updated eternal truths.

Members of the L generation (50 plus) may have read forerunners of this book in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s -- but younger readers are likely to experience an epiphany after finding out how the old rules continue to work when it comes to interacting with others in the workplace.

The under-35 crowd grew up dealing with computers and technology. For them, it's normalcy. But problems arise when they haven't been clued in on how to share knowledge, communicate, politic, collaborate and avoid behaving in a self-defeating narcissistic mode.

(Example: A friend's 29-year-old son admitted he'd been fired from all four of his information technology jobs since leaving the military. He has not a clue as to why he can't hold a job.)

The "Escape'' authors deal with useful issues when they explain such concepts as solving problems that affect your future by thinking in a systems mode, rather than knee-jerk blaming and linear "simple'' thinking. Simple thinking is built around familiar assumptions, including these two example: When things go wrong, someone is at fault -- move quickly to punish the guilty. The culprit isn't us -- always put the blame on someone else. "This kind of simple thinking works okay for life's easier hurdles and mishaps,'' Boleman and Deal explain. "But it leads us astray for many of -- the complex relationships among multiple things -- systems.''

The Elian Gonzalez controversy serves as an illustration of simple vs. systems thinking. In simple thinking, U.S. officials say Elian should be returned to his father, period. In systems thinking, a U.S. court states that more than Elian's custody is involved, that the child's right to asylum must be examined. News analysts proclaim Elian's well-being has been shuffled in with all the other issues at stake in a war between nations, people and values.

Back to the workplace: The authors give advice on a lot more than systems thinking, including using the office political system, improving workplace relationships, cracking the company's cultural code and learning to be a leader at any level.

I recommend "Escape From Cluelessness'' as this year's career-management graduation gift to all the young people you wish to protect from workplace relationships that resemble those of a dysfunctional family.

Send career questions for possible use in this column to Joyce Lain Kennedy at Box 368, Cardiff, CA 92007, or e-mail her (jlk@sunfeatures.com). Sorry, no personal replies.

© 2000, Los Angeles Times Syndicate