Somewhere down towards the bottom end of this post there is a book review. This is not unusual and regular readers will be well aware I am going to waffle on for a few hundred words before I actually talk about the book. The book itself however is unusual in regards to the usual mix of sci-fi/fantasy/horror/or just plain weird, that I tend to review here between everything else I write about. I say this because it is a non-fiction memoir about working in the retail sector, written by a delightfully funny woman who makes video shorts primarily (though not exclusively) about fashion and the fashion trade. This is, I am sure regular readers of my blog, and anyone who knows me will agree, not exactly my area.

I generally wear black Levi jeans, black band t-shirts, band hoodies of bands on 40th anniversary tours, and New Rocks cowboy boots. A couple of those black T-shirts that I still wear regularly (and I don’t just mean around the house, but out and about) are now a very light grey, and older than my eldest child. If that doesn’t sound too much of a fashion sin you probably need to know my eldest is a primary school teacher who will be thirty in December.

They made Band T Shirts to last in the early 90’s…

Of course I also occasionally wear tweed suits, waist coats and bowler hats when I am working at conventions. I am entirely capable of dressing myself and have a large collection of pocket watches, cuff links and pagan ear-rings, and LARP style quazi-medieval/Viking shirts. But fashion wise this is where I am at.

Aging goth, quantum pagan or cira 1890’s esoteric investigator… Lets just say fashion is not something in which I generally engage. I may occasionally have been fashionable for a few hours in the mid 2000’s but only because fashion came to me, not the other way round.

The other thing regular readers would know about me is that I am a little bit bi-polar, (in the exact same way as the ocean is a little bit moist). This is not an official diagnosis, I have never wanted or needed an official diagnosis, I know who I am and where I hang around on the spectrum. I am also luck enough that while I swing between depressed and manic, while never settling in the middle for any length of time, my downs are only so down and my ups only so up. I know my own symptoms and how best to manage them. For several weeks recently, I have been deep in the downs, both for what I would term as real reasons and the imagined ones (which are not imaginary, merely to do with state of mind, which is to say they are real to me) Those reasons are not important, and ones I suspect those who know me well could guess at. What was important was I needed a way to shift my focus and not dwell upon them even more. I needed distraction, as I sat staring at my desktop screen, trying to find meaning in pixels. One of the easy way to distract myself from darker thoughts is to ‘doom scroll’ which is a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase in this instance but the one our cultural zeitgeist uses, so apt.

I doom scroll a lot, Wikipedia, goggle images, Pinterest, wander off on wild adventures that could be called research, and on occasion Facebook Reels, because the algorithm does a lot of heavy lifting for you, will throw random stuff your way and watches to see what sticks, pause to watch a whole reel and it will put more form that creator before your eyes… This is of course intrinsically dystopian, but it does mean you tend to get more of what you like, or things that makes you stare at them like a rabbit in headlights for too long…

Recently, while on a down , I spent a whole night watching reels featuring Billy Connelly. Before that it was DadBodVeteran a beard atached to a GenX guy standing on his poach commenting on stuff he has seen on the internet with a mix of disbelief, suppressed rage, and wisdom, all with a sardonic wit that makes me smile. There are others, lots of others, I mention Dad bod because he comes across as a particularly good guy, and he is well worth a watch.

The most recent creator the algorithms threw at me which managed to stick however was at first was a bit of an outlier. The Lady doing reels about fashion I mentioned earlier. The delightful Maggie Weber otherwise known as RefashionedHippie. Maggie does videos like ‘the fashion game, what is this’ where she shows you an item and asks you to guess what it is, and how much it costs. ‘This is stupid and I hate it’ where she shows you a item of fashion, mocks it, and them mildly rages about the price, often just before going on to point out that rather than spend $10000 on a what appears to be a sleeping bag you walk around in from Channel, you could buy 1000 actual high grade sleeping bags for the homeless through a charity… ‘Designing for humans 102’ where she ‘plays’ and abductee teaching aliens how to design cloths for humans, somewhat unsuccessfully though the aliens all work for well known designers…

Actually, I am not sure if designing for humans is comedy or a factual observation given some of the things Maggie has show me from Balenciaga…

Maggie is very funny, she is also warm hearted, loving, and passionate about her subject. She comes at fashion from the thrift store. She upcycles, and is a champion of all things Etsy and the like. She is very much a hippy in that regard. She uses the platform her comedy bits of the world of high fashion , low fashion, and other things that amuse her so she makes amuse you, to try and make the world a better place. Encouraging her followers towards good causes.

(Maggie actually had me in tears over one go-fund me she asked her followers to help out with that had been stuck for a year and her followers managed to fully fund in a matter of hours for a mother to move her and her daughter out of state and away from her daughters abuser. Again those who know me will know getting me to tear up is not overly difficult, particularly when I am in a down phase, but still, it is things like this that restore your faith in humanity.)

There are a lot of reels, I started working backwards through them on Instagram, as I did other things on the desktop. I started to resurface, to the echoes of Maggie saying ‘Hello’ on Instagram, making me, laugh, smile, feel less disconnected and then reconnected with that esoteric madness that is humanity. I think this was round about the Dawn French* moment I was back to myself fully…

*yes that Dawn French, who liked one of Maggie’s reels on Instagram, followed her, and possibly broke Maggie with happiness ( she did the dance). Having been more than a little in love with Dawn French since all the way back her The Comic Strip Presents days, I can completely understand Maggie’s excitement…

In any regards I am still watching Maggie’s videos, backwards through the Instagram time line… But mostly because they just make me smile a lot, and I love the way she says ‘Hello’, rather than to deal with a wave of depression. But adventures in short reel videos aside, Maggie has also written a book (well two actually and narrated several audio books, but this post has been leading up to the book review I promised earlier…) A book called ‘Why I hate Everything’ which is an odd title when Maggie is such a positive influence on the world, but As it is a memoir of 10 years working in the retail industry in the USA, perhaps not… The book was a wonderfully engaging read, made me late for work three times this week because I ended up reading till stupid o’clock in the morning and I recommend it to anyone.

Why I Hate Everything ~ Maggie Weber

Retail is a strange place. I am aware I speak as a man who is less than fond of shopping, and who has never worked in a shop, but I have long been aware for those who do, retail is a strange place. Just how strange… Well that’s where this book comes in.

Be in a donut shop, a thrift shop or a ’boutique’, retail is indeed a strange world, all the stranger for the people who work in it, the staff, the managers, becoming one of those managers and needed to manage staff… And then of course you have the dark forces ranged against you at all times plotting your down fall and seeking to break your fragile spirit. You might also know these dark forces as ‘costumers’.

Maggie Weber did not so much chose to work in retail, as it was chosen for her. A teenager reluctantly in need of a summer job, possibly because her mum just wanted her out of the house, she ends up working in a donut shop staffed with a delightful collection of people who depending whether they work out front or in the kitchen out back speak Hindi or Spanish, and reluctantly English if all else fails. The Latino bakers have girlfriend problems and tie up the only phone line so you can’t take card payments. The manager communicates by notes and is in a strange form of stationary based warfare with his kitchen staff. Maggie meanwhile learns the dark arts of avoiding actual work (anything involving costumers) by holding onto a mop and looking busy, and many other lessons that set her in good stead when she ends up back in retail after collage when she takes a temp job at the first of three thrift stores and then a ‘mall boutique’ until she finds her actual vocation.

If things in the donut store were a little weird at times, this was nothing compared to life in a thrifty store. Where you occasionally help the shoplifters who look like they really need the help. Or point out how all the profits go to charities to guilt the other shop lifters who really don’t into paying for that $3 dollar top they slipped into their bag. And that’s before the extremely religious boss and the pro Christian hiring policies kick in. ‘When did the Lord Jesus first make himself known to you? Please answer in the from of an essay…’ And lets not mention The Matrix.

I said don’t mention the Matrix….

The world of retail is odd, the staff odder (and when teenagers worryingly dumb), the costumers down right weird, aggressive and detached form reality, and Maggie guides you through it all. The strange, the funny, the touching, the wonderful, the delightful , the horrifying and the oh my god my sides are splitting how can this be true but of forgive me lord I hope it is…

In short this is a journey, a delightful, heart warming, engaging, funny journey, and one well worth taking.

A final note, as I will drop Maggie an email to tell her I have written a blog post about her book as I would any other author, so she might read this.

‘Hello’ and Thank you