Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 4/5 cats
this book is a hoot. it gets five stars cats for concept and design, and a solid 3.75 for execution. i didn’t realize when i started this book that the author was guy who wrote yeti vs. bear in Tall Tales with Short Cocks Vol. 4, which was one of the funnier stories in that collection, and has one of the best opening scenes in the broader collection of “stories ever written.”
this book is set up like an IKEA catalog, and walks that line between humor and horror without ever putting a ring on either one.
the audience that will get the most out of this is anyone who has ever worked for a significant period of time in a retail environment. not you retail dilettantes who worked a summer job at a bookstore after college before you went off to your lucrative careers in whatever it is people have lucrative careers in nowadays. i’m talking to you people who have been in the trenches. who have been beaten down by the atrocious behavior of customers, the inane made-up terminology in handbooks and orientations, and the complete disconnect between the corporate ideals and the reality of the sales floor. those of you who have smiled through verbal abuse, been used as pawns to test new company directives you knew were destined to fail, been called a “nazi” when relaying policies you had no hand in creating, been victims of ever-decreasing perks as the mucky-mucks cut your hours and benefits from the plush safety of their private jets. who were told you were part of a family, and then forced to sit at the kiddie table with juice boxes and pbj. told that you were important but that loyalty means taking one for the team sometimes for the good of the company. told that Your brand connection is weak, your presentation leaves a lot to be desired, your attitude is aggressive and confrontational and not at all consistent with Core Values. this one’s for you, my beleaguered brethren.
this all takes place at orsk, a beige box store IKEA wanna-be whose headquarters are in milwaukee but adopt the faux-european elegance of their competitor:
Over on the wall was a large banner that read: “The hard work makes Orsk a family, and the hard work is free.” the completely fake, slightly stilted Euro-phrasing was part of Orsk’s fake Ikea act, and Amy couldn’t decide if it was slightly annoying or totally offensive. In her opinion, nothing was worse than a store that pretended to be something it was not.
amy is like many poor souls in retail jobs – complacent and unambitious, going through the motions, struggling with student loans, both resenting and needing the work.
The more Amy struggled, the faster she sank. Every month she shuffled around less and less money to cover the same number of bills. The hamster wheel kept spinning and spinning. Sometimes she wanted to let go and find out exactly how far she’d fall if she just stopped fighting.She didn’t expect life to be fair, but did it have to be so relentless?
she hates the job, the customers, her younger-than-her boss basil and his commitment to babbling corporatespeak, her hipster co-workers, and the sameness of her days. she’s all set to transfer to a different branch to escape some of the irritants when basil offers her a deal: he will approve her transfer and give her 200 dollars cash if she works an overnight shift with both him and another worker: relentlessly upbeat team player/cashier ruth anne. it is to be a very special shift, designed to catch in the act whomever is responsible for a number of incidents of vandalism occurring inside the store. and while it might sound a little inappropriate to invite two female workers to spend the night in the store; workers who are completely unqualified for any sort of security task force, it is all innocently-intended. all the strapping young men were unavailable, and there is an inspection in the morning that needs to go off without a hitch, so time is of the essence. the cash is too tempting to turn down, so amy agrees to spend the night in the dark and spooky store with people who annoy her.
she knew it was going to suck, but she didn’t know it was gonna get bloody.
because the orsk store isn’t the only building to ever stand on this spot, and tonight the past is coming back with a vengeance, and if you thought retail was torture, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
the book is great fun, with fantastic attention to detail as the catalog items introducing each chapter get more and more sinister as the book progresses, and the allusions become darker as what arises out of the “retail hypnosis” maze of the store unleashes its judgments. it’s a clever spin on the haunted house story, a parody of consumer culture, and it pokes fun at teevee ghost hunters, hipsters with daddy’s credit cards, and companies whose products are sold in shades of “flamingo” and “beaver oak.”
if nothing else, it’s a lot of fun to hold.
now, please enjoy these retail-themed gifs:
