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Servo
Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift | David Goodwin
2 posts | 2 read | 2 to read
An odyssey of drive-offs, spiked slurpees, stale sausage rolls and sleep-deprived madness. Most of us have done our time in the retail trenches, but service stations are undoubtedly the frontline, as Melburnian David Goodwin found out when he started working the weekend graveyard shift at his local servo. From his very first night shift, David absorbed a consistent level of mind-bending lunacy, encountering everything from giant shoplifting bees and balaclava-clad goons hurling cordial-filled water bombs from the sunroof of their BMW, to anarcho-goths high on MDMA releasing large rats into the store from their matching Harry Potter backpacks. Over the years, David grew to love his mad servo, handing out free pies and chocolate bars on the sly as he grew a backbone and became street smart. Amidst the unrelenting chaos, he eventually made it out of the servo circus - and lived to tell the tale. For anyone who's ever toiled under the unforgiving fluorescent lights of a customer service job, SERVO is a side-splitting and darkly mesmeric coming-of-age story from behind the anti-jump wire that will have you gritting your teeth, then cackling at the absurdity, idiocy and utterly beguiling strangeness of those who only come out at night.
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keepingupwiththepenguins
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Pickpick

What I appreciated most about Servo was the new perspective Goodwin offers on the humble service station, a utilitarian venue frequented by people from all walks of life at some point or another. You‘ll come to this book for the freaks and the weirdos, but you‘ll stay for the window into the world at night and the stories of the comrades who staff it. Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/servo-david-goodwin/

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CarolynM
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Panpan

This book, a memoir of life on the graveyard shift in an outer suburban service (gas) station, has had some glowing reviews. I wonder how much the publishers paid for them? While I guess it‘s worthwhile to cast light on the difficulties of this sort of poorly paid work, 300+ pages of over-written anecdotes of drug fuelled crazinesss (both customers & author) gets pretty tedious & I was uncomfortable with the depiction of the underprivileged.

dabbe #fanofthepan! 🤩🤩🤩 1mo
Suet624 That‘s a bummer. I‘d be up for reading a good book about that graveyard shift. Sounds like this isn‘t it. (edited) 1mo
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