Bossy customers, out-of-touch managers, missing children, gawking Mormons, weapons of cardiac destruction, overworked and underpaid employees — it’s all in a day’s work at Bigmart.
There’s no shortage of wild, funny, and moving tales to tell, and writer Steven Surman captures them all in the pages of Bigmart Confidential: Dispatches from America’s Retail Empire. In the book, Surman details his time working as a deli clerk in one of the world’s largest big-box retailers. And his experiences and encounters there taught him a valuable lesson: American retail is far stranger and funnier than fiction. Because only at a superstore like Bigmart is it possible to be lectured by an irritated customer speaking frantically through a mechanical larynx.
Surman’s clean and conversational prose delivers a true account full of hilarious customer-service stories and sharp insights into the toils of the working class and the ever-growing service industry that employs it. Fans of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries, and NBC’s Superstore cannot miss this book!
Read the first chapter of Bigmart Confidential, “Marijuana and a Stiff Drink.”
Read more about Bigmart Confidential‘s official publication.
Read about mainstream publishing’s rejection of Bigmart Confidential.
