Bad Jobs: My Last Shift at Albert Wong's Pagoda and Other Ugly Tales of the Workplace [Paperback]

Carellin Brooks (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2002

Bad Jobs is an anthology of tales—both humorous and tragic—about the worst jobs people have ever held.

This collection of stories, comics, and photographs depict, in gory true-life detail, examples of bad jobs. We all shudder at the thought of our own worst jobs-waiter, cashier, parking lot attendant-but these take the cake, demonstrating just how bad bad jobs can be.

Bad Jobs is full of wry, subversive tales, comics, and assorted miscellany from the trenches of the working world. You think your job is bad? Meet:

The flyer delivery guy who sees poetry in broken glass—from a beer bottle some kids threw at him. The phone sex operator who can bring a man to orgasm while reading Ms. Magazine. A customer service rep who only hates two things about her job: the customers and everything else. A one-time stripper who performs her first- and last-mainstage routine to Aretha Franklin's R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

The sex-shop clerk who, when confronted by a deaf-mute demanding a dollar, makes sure he can read her lips mouthing, "Fuck you. Get a job!" The factory grunt who knows firsthand what really goes into "Crushed Party Ice." The fabric wholesaler whose coworker insists he never raped a woman who didn't love it. The applicant whose interviewers end up breathing real hard through their noses, until she points out that half of their interview questions are illegal. An environmental canvasser who turns up in the local paper's "Crimewatch" column-and considers turning himself in for the reward money.

By turns beautiful, surreal, hilarious, and awful, Bad Jobs will get under your skin with stories about how really awful a truly bad job can be.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carellin Brooks teaches at UBC. She is the co-editor, with Brett Josef Grubisic, of Carnal Nation: Brave New Sex Fictions (Arsenal Pulp Press) and editor of Bad Jobs (Arsenal Pulp Press). She is also the author of Every Inch a Woman: Phallic Possession, Femininity and the Text (UBC Press) and Wreck Beach (New Star Books). She lives in Vancouver.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551520559
• ISBN-13: 978-1551520551
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,199,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Vital New Literary Form, April 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bad Jobs: My Last Shift at Albert Wong's Pagoda and Other Ugly Tales of the Workplace (Paperback)

This is a very cool collection of stories, comics, and photographs depict, in gory true-life detail, examples of bad jobs. Included is the tale of a phone sex operator who routinely brings men to orgasm while reading Ms Magazine, the stripper who performs her first-and last-routine to Aretha Franklin's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T", and the factory worker who knows firsthand what goes into "Crushed Party Ice." Truth is alternately more irritating and stranger that fiction as with the story of the applicant whose interviewers end up breathing real hard through their noses, until she points out that half of their interview questions are illegal or an environmental canvasser who turns up in the local paper's "Crimewatch" column - and considers turning himself in for the reward money. By turns beautiful, surreal, hilarious, and awful, BAD JOBS brings together a plurality to the aesthetic responses to each author's 'true stories' just as some forms of badness require different remedies. The stories in this collection mix subversive laughter at absurdity with the sadness, frustrations and failed hopes that makeup many workplace experience. Perhaps best of all Bad Jobs is a vital and welcomed new model for complaint and renewal in storytelling from the rare perspective of the bottom up.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not one of my favorite 'real-world' books..., December 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Bad Jobs: My Last Shift at Albert Wong's Pagoda and Other Ugly Tales of the Workplace (Paperback)

Some of the employment horror stories are funny but several chapters were quite honestly, vulgar. This book is loaded with graphic, sexual content and strong language. When reading the chapters I felt that some of the supposed "real-life experiences" were exaggerated or even fabricated. I have heard better "on-the-job-horror-stories" from my co-workers than what I read in this book.