Nowaytomakealiving.net is named after a mis­hear­ing of the Dolly Par­ton song 9 to 5, one of a small num­ber of songs about office work. 9 to 5 is the theme song to the 1980 film, where Dolly Par­ton, Lily Tom­lin and Jane Fonda seek revenge on a sex­ist boss who har­asses them and steals their ideas. Gender polit­ics, the con­straint of liv­ing within indus­tri­al­ised organ­isa­tional time, solid­ar­ity in the work­place and the unful­fil­ments of work (‘There’s a bet­ter life, and you think about it don’t you?’) are all themes in the film, which the song hints at (here sung with the sur­pris­ing assist­ance of adults dressed as dis­ney characters).

The nar­rator in Bil­lie Jo Spears’ 1969 coun­try song Mr Walker it’s all Over could have done with some female col­leagues like Dolly, Lily and Jane. ‘I don’t like the New York Secretary’s life’, and who can blame her, when it’s too full of men, from the com­pany pres­id­ent on down, with hands ‘reach­ing out to grab the things that I con­sider mine’. So she’s head­ing back to Garden City, Kan­sas, because ‘the boy next door don’t know it but come June he’s gonna gain him­self a wife’. A late-1960s exper­i­ment with women work­ing in the big city is here doomed to fail­ure, and an earlier fem­in­in­ity is reasserted.

Step into the Office Baby by Belle and Sebastian is also about office polit­ics and sexual har­ass­ment. Here, the roles are reversed, as we might expect in a post-feminist world. She says

We need to talk
Step into my office, baby
I want to give you the job
A chance of overtime
Say my place at nine

He, though, isn’t sure. He’s ‘a slave to work’, he’s ‘only liv­ing when I walk amongst office staff’. And he’s not sure that he wants the sort of over­time she has in mind.

She wants him to sharpen up, be a man, com­plete with retro phal­lic necktie.

I've got to change my ways
Dress for business every day
A sharp suit and a kipper tie
A big arrow pointing to my fly

It’s not just the inver­sion of het­ero­norm­at­ive expect­a­tions that’s not­able in the con­trast between Mr Walker and Step into the Office, it’s the mean­ing of private sphere. In 1969, she could escape back home, where her mom and her man will save her. In 2003, he has nowhere to hide: his own place isn’t a sanc­tu­ary from work, but a place where work is in his head ‘in bed by nine, my thoughts com­posed’, and he suc­cumbs to the office affair, goes to her place to ‘take down her little red dress’. The office is no escape from sexual politics.