Books
The Customer Is Always Wrong: Retail Chronicles
Ever work in retail growing up? It’s a rite of passage that unites us all, whether you were a Gap girl, a Benetton babe, or a Sbarro’s slinger. Me? I was one of the Sears Queers … and I share my hilarious and humiliating tenure in a new essay collection out October 2008 from Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint. It’s called “The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles,” and features an incredible group of writers, including Colson Whitehead, Po Bronson, T Cooper and Elaine Viets. My essay, "Sears, Sbarros, Sayonara" centers on my '80s work experience at Sears – the Husky's Hell of my youth. It's very "Fast Times at Ridgmont High" meets "Slackers" meets "The Material Girl." To read an excerpt, "Long Lunch Breaks," click here. For more on the book, click here
And this lovely little anthology is already receiving great early reviews. Publisher’s Weekly just weighed in with: "The mundane tasks and indignant exchanges with impossible customers are hilariously captured in this collection of personal essays by a cross-section of writers and humorists. Some, like a spa attendant’s dishy tale, are spun with a catty flair and flirt with a mild contempt for frivolous consumers; others, like Wendy Spero's turn as a door-to-door knife seller, are outrageously funny and incorporate life lessons in the litany of humiliations. Breezy and occasionally creepy musings on everything from guilt over serving fattening Swedish pancakes to seniors to the horrors of working at Sears may provide some nostalgic chuckles and perhaps even some unpleasant flashbacks as this collection elevates retail selling to a rite of passage."
And author and Barney’s creative director Simon Doonan provided the following blurb: "Once I got passed the shock and horror of not being asked to contribute to this book, I started to enjoy it...a lot. Cathartic and entertaining, these essays will rivet and delight, regardless of which side of the counter you stand on."
