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March 30, 2005
Disgruntled Restaurant Employees Embrace Timothy’s Take-Out
While most people experience poor customer service from time to time, how many of them would be willing to trade places with the poor schmuck across the counter? Precious few, believes author Paul J. Barker.
(PRWEB) March 30, 2005 -- It is impossible to maintain one’s dignity while serving customers in a fast food joint. To be successful in this line of work requires, among other things, patience, humility, mental toughness, and the ability to work like a pack animal. Carl Fellows – embittered narrator of Barker’s stunning debut novel, “Timothy’s Take-Out” – has what it takes to succeed, in theory. So why does he feel so completely out of his depth as manager of a fast food restaurant?
The answer is simple: Carl Fellows is not a people person. He loves animals, forests, ancient castles, and cold November afternoons. At no point do human beings enter into the equation. He had allowed himself to be seduced – by a charming resort town – into taking a job that seems now on the verge of driving him insane.
Too stubborn to concede defeat, young Fellows attempts to make the best of a bad situation. He channels his rage into various get-rich-quick schemes, exhibiting plenty of heart but not much ability. He falls hard for an angelic coworker five years his junior. He looks forward to the sleepy off-seasons, when the tourists depart and the town becomes “like a mythical place.”
Paul J. Barker, himself a longtime restaurant worker, was quick to realize the comedic potential of a book based on employee-customer confrontations and pathetically mismanaged fast food joints. In no particular hurry to get the book done, he set about constructing it with painstaking care, and the fruit of his labor is finally available (both at his website http://www.dontlikemyjob.com and most major online bookstores.)
There are autographed copies of "Timothy’s Take-Out" to be won, also. Check out the popular site http://www.retailsucks.com/ for details.
Posted by Industrial-Manufacturing at March 30, 2005 03:02 AM