A while back, a coworker at the company where I was working won a new writer's prize for a novel. I say coworker, but she'd already left the company before I started there, so until she won the prize I never even knew she existed. The prize-winning piece had as its narrator a woman working in sales at a building products manufacturer, and the work was clearly based upon my company. She became the sole topic of conversation around the office. Our company gave birth to a novelist, the in-house newsletter proclaimed, and there were five men who said you know, actually I was the model for that work. Looking coolly at the situation, T— who worked in the office commented:

But all she did was write about the company exactly as it is.