The laws of the office revisited

Live event info and tickets here. If something is going wrong in your workplace, there's probably a law that explains why. Meetings always seem long, and never end early? There’s Parkinson’s Law, which says work expands to the time allotted, or, restated: meetings will always take up all the time blocked on Outlook calendars. Is your boss bad at managing? Check the Peter Principle, which says people are promoted to their level of incompetence. A good worker does not a good manager make. And yet … here we are. Once you hear these laws, and a few others, you start to spot them everywhere. Today on the show, we picked a few of the most famous and powerful ‘laws of the office’ and tested them out on each other. Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift . /

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The laws of the office revisited is an episode from Planet Money by NPR.

This episode is 29:35 long.

This episode was published on Mar 11, 2026.

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