The Customer is Always Wrong is a hilarious yet raw memoir of a young artist's experience working in a restaurant full of sleaze-balls. Mimi Pond's brash yet genuine storytelling creates a vivid snapshot of the low-rent warzone that was Oakland in the late '70s. Her talents as a cartoonist and storyteller are on full display in this epic and comedic novel that will keep readers laughing and cringing in equal measure. If you're a fan of memoirs that pull no punches, this is definitely one to pick up.

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• Harvey Awards Nominee for Book of the Year (2018)

A young woman's art career begins to lift off as those around her succumb to addiction and alcoholismThe Customer is Always Wrong is the saga of a young naive artist named Madge working in a restaurant of charming drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Oakland in the late seventies is a cheap and quirky haven for eccentrics, and Mimi Pond folds the tales of the fascinating sleazeball characters that surround young Madge into her workaday waitressing life. Outrageous and loving tributes and takedowns of her co-workers and satellites of the Imperial Cafe create a snapshot of a time in Madge's life where she encounters who she is, and who she is not.Employing the same brash yet earnest style as her previous memoir Over Easy, Pond's storytelling gifts have never been stronger than in this epic, comedic, standalone graphic novel. Madge is right back at the Imperial with its great coffee and depraved cast, where things only get worse for her adopted greasy-spoon family while her career as a cartoonist starts to take off.

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