Date: November 18th 2008

(Mailing list information, including unsubscription instructions,
is located at the end of this message.)
__

Caught between the economic downturn and the high-pressure holiday season, retail workers will be under a great deal of stress in the coming months. A retail worker might find herself worried about her job on the one hand, and on the other, frazzled because her employers have not been able to hire seasonal workers, so she’s twice as busy as she has been in the past. And the holiday music, played on a loop during her 10-hour shift, might be driving her insane, but the prospect of losing her job is much more stressful.

Jeff Martin knows about the stress of retail. He has worked his way up from video store clerk (his first retail job) to bookstore clerk (his current profession), and now with Black Friday just around the corner, his hilarious new edited anthology of retail stories, The Customer is Always Wrong, is just the thing to get retail workers – and consumers – through the stressful holiday season.

As John McFarland from Shelf Awareness wrote in a recent review, "The results are uniformly sardonic, touching, hilarious, uplifting and bizarre; in short: terrific! ...one really original take on retailing after another.... Kudos to Jeff Martin for compiling essays that so consistently fly readers to the moon." The Onion’s A.V. Club says, “There must be a retail work experience so horrifying that there's nothing funny about it. If so . . . Martin must have decided to excise it from The Customer Is Always Wrong. [The] best stories supersede its jokey title and become true slices of life . . . it never trivializes the value of suffering a little for a paycheck.”


Equally enthusiastic reviews from Publishers Weekly and more are included in the press release excerpt pasted below. Contributors to the anthology include Colson Whitehead, Elaine Viets, Jim de Rogatis, Po Bronson, and more.

Jeff is a delightfully personable, funny, and down-to-earth new writer who is well-prepared to share his retail experiences. More seriously, he understands the plight of the retail worker in these difficult economic times.

He is available for an interview at any time. Let us know if you’d like to receive a copy of The Customer is Always Wrong, and we will send it along!

All best,
Soft Skull

--------------
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From Mom and Pop general stores to huge chains, it is impossible to think of American experience without thinking about the buying/selling culture that is retail. It is almost a rite of passage to pay your dues in a retail environment. The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles (Soft Skull Press / Counterpoint; Trade Paper Original; October 2008; $12.95; 978-1-933368-90-0) is a funny yet informative collection of essays by writers from all corners of the literary world.

Elaine Viets, author of the Dead-End Job mystery series, describes all the crazy jobs she's done to write her books; Jim DeRogatis (author of Let it Blurt) describes hanging out with Al at Al Rocky's Music Store; Colson Whitehead describes how three summers working a Long Island ice cream store put him off ice cream and desserts of all kinds for the rest of his life; and enlivening the table of contents are Wade Rouse, Michael Beaumier, Po Bronson, Stewart Lewis, Victor Gischler, Timothy Bracy, Anita Liberty, Trisha Thomas, Kevin Smokler and T Cooper.

This book, however, not only shines a light on the absurdities of retail, but finds the delight in it as well. If it weren't for the customer, our economy would not function. And for every abusive customer or moronic employee, there are people who come into our lives and change its course forever.

About the Author:
Jeff Martin was born in the summer of 1980. Growing up in Tulsa, OK, Jeff never expected his adult life to be filled with customer complaints and secret shoppers. With various aspirations from superhero (unrealistic) to the next Bob Dylan (impossible), he paid little attention to his schoolwork. His retail career began at a video store. Jeff soon began idolizing director Quentin Tarantino for the simple fact that he is the only ex-video store clerk to go on to win an Oscar and make millions of dollars. Upon graduation, Jeff decided to leave his hometown and make his way in the world as a writer. A little over a year later, he returned home with his tail between his legs and a lot of bad poetry. With the writing not paying the bills, he was forced to look for alternative forms of income. A week or so later, he was working at a local bookstore. Seven years and one wife later, he's still there.


More Praise for The Customer is Always Wrong

"The mundane tasks and indignant exchanges with impossible customers are hilariously captured in this collection.... Some...are spun with a catty flair and flirt with a mild contempt for frivolous consumers; others...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." —Publishers Weekly

"Once I got past 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." —Simon Doonan, Creative Director Barneys New York (since 1986)

“Shows up for work with a chip on its shoulder.” —The Wall Street Journal



--
The following information is a reminder of your current mailing
list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list:
Soft Skull Media

using the following email:
example@example.com

You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by
visiting the following URL:

<http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/u/Soft_Skull_Media/>;

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the
entire address. Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break
this automatic unsubscribe mechanism.

You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen:

<http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/Soft_Skull_Media>;

If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

<mailto:publicity@softskull.com>;

The following physical address is associated with this mailing list:



Mailing List Powered by Dada Mail
http://www.softskull.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/what_is_dada_mail/