The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles

(Paperback)

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Description

From mom-and-pop general stores to big-box, strip-mall chains, it is impossible to consider the American experience without thinking about the buying-and-selling retail culture- the sales and the stockrooms, the shift managers, and the clock punchers. The Customer Is Always Wrong is a tragicomic and all-too revealing collection of essays by writers who have done their time behind the counter and lived to tell their tales. Jim DeRogatis, author of Let It Blurt, for example, describes hanging out with Al himself at Al Rocky's Music Store, while Colson Whitehead explains how three summers at a Long Island ice cream store gave him a lifelong aversion to all things dessert-like. This book not only shines a light on the absurdities of retail culture but finds the delight in it as well.

Author Bio

Jeff Martin edited the retail anthology The Customer Is Always Wrong and in 2009 released his fabricated memoir, My Dog Ate My Nobel Prize. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. C. Max Magee created and edits the online magazine The Millions. He has appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition and has written for Poets & Writers, The Morning News, and The Rumpus. He lives in Philadelphia. Contributors Include- Thomas Allen _x0095_ Kyle Beachy _x0095_ John Brandon _x0095_ Sonya Chung _x0095_ Elizabeth Crane _x0095_ Rudolph Delson _x0095_ Rivka Galchen _x0095_ David Gates and Jonathan Lethem _x0095_ Joshua Gaylord _x0095_ Lauren Groff _x0095_ Garth Risk Hallberg _x0095_ Owen King _x0095_ Benjamin Kunkel _x0095_ Reif Larsen _x0095_ Victor LaValle _x0095_ Emily St. John Mandel _x0095_ Clancy Martin _x0095_ Michael Paul Mason _x0095_ Joe Meno _x0095_ Ander Monson _x0095_ Victoria Patterson _x0095_ Tom Piazza _x0095_ Marco Roth _x0095_ Nancy Jo Sales _x0095_ Katherine Taylor _x0095_ Deb Olin Unferth