Fic Rec: For Guidance, Plase See the Corporate Interpersonal Relationship Policy

Title: For Guidance, Please See the Corporate Interpersonal Relationship Policy
Author: suspiciousflashlight
Fandom: Naruto
Length: 25.7k
Ao3 Link

I remember exactly where I was when I first read this fic. It was April 2022, and I was sitting in Starbucks drinking a somewhat disappointing iced matcha latte. For the first time since starting my current job I allowed myself to take the afternoon off to run some errands and pick up gifts for Mother's Day (though I ended up dealing with some kind of Powerpoint Emergency anyway because I forgot to turn on my out of office). A friend from grad school posted a link to it in our group chat the previous night, someone who isn't particularly in fandom but spends time on Reddit and aware of it from a distance.

Her only commentary had been "Naruto meets federal government employment".

I couldn't put it down.

At this point I need to admit that 100% of my knowledge about Naruto comes from mid-2000s weeaboo osmosis - a girl I hung out with in junor high subscribed to Shonen Jump so I would flip through the Naruto chapters occasionally but didn't read them too closely. I'd seen other kids at our local anime convention wearing those headbands; characters from it showed up pretty often in people's forum signatures and avatars; I knew it was about ninjas. If you gave me a random character's name, I could maybe tell you that they were from this show but not much else.

But there was never a time reading this fic that I felt confused or that I didn't immediately clue into what kind of person each character was - they felt somehow both accurate to what little I knew about them from the source material (Naruto is happy-go-lucky, Kakashi likes dogs and romance novels) and fitting seamlessly into the mundane halls of a government office in downtown Ottawa.

Which brings me to point #2, which is that you can and should (if you want) Take Your Fandom to Work. People don't stop wanting to write fic just because they have careers and pension plans and car payments. And people who do write fic also have other hobbies and interests beyond fandom, other experiences and skills. There are fic writers in every industry imaginable, probably. Some days (okay, most days) I would honestly rather read a fic set in some extremely niche industry that I've never heard about before rather than yet another high school AU. You know stuff! Even if you don't think your job is particularly glamorous or high-skilled, I want to hear about it!

The author clearly has a wealth of inside knowledge about how the Government of Canada operates, but even more than that, about how any large corporate-type office operates. I have no idea how they managed to make it both extremely specific and widely applicable at the same time - it's really kind of amazing.

Also, it's hilarious. I can't pick a favourite line because there are so many great ones but trust me, it will probably make you at least chuckle.

Anyway. Go read 'For Guidance...'; when you're done, there is an excellent sequel published about a year ago.