Shelf Life
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Daily Mail
Our Eintein of the aisles
Tony Hawks
With this book Simon Parke has managed to do something remarkable. He has taken the ostensibly "ordinary" world of a supermarket and turned it into an entertaining classroom where we can learn important lessons, whilst having fun at the same time. A great read.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Supermarket life,
By
This review is from: Shelf Life: How I Found The Meaning of Life Stacking Supermarket Shelves (Paperback)
On the face of it this is just life behind the scenes at a supermarket but it is actually very much more than this. After 20 years as a priest Simon Parke decided the life is not for him. But is life as a supermarket worker any better? Incidents involving staff and customers are related with humour and insight. Even trivial happenings tell us something about life in general. The biggest insight I got from this book is that life is what you make it - if you're miserable - like Winston - then your life will be miserable.
Having worked in a supermarket myself I found this book fascinating and very true to life. Drawing a moral from each story might seem a little pious but Simon Parke's writing style and his self deprecating humour lifts it onto another plain entirely. I loved the supermarket workers themselves - Winston, Sapphy, Faith, Caspar and the managers Pinochio - because he never tells the truth, Kong - because he looks like the film character. All have their own hopes and fears and outside interests. Together the staff are from the four corners of the world and many different religions but in the main they work together reasonably harmoniously. This is an interesting little book and easy to read and it may just make you see your life differently. I enjoyed it.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hidden gem,
By Lady Day (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shelf Life: How I Found The Meaning of Life Stacking Supermarket Shelves (Paperback)
This is a superb book. Simon Parke felt compelled, after 20 years, to give up his job of Parish Priest, but found the only place willing to take him on was a supermarket on their shopfloor. From this unpromising and potentially gloomy starting point, Parke manages to craft a book that is full of insight, humour, wisdom, and poignancy. It has a wonderful lightness of touch, very funny lines and observations, and utterly convincing character portraits as we become acquainted with his colleagues and regular customers. It's a very revealing insight into the workings of our major supermarkets - his trip to the gleaming headquarters to represent a colleague in a tribunal particularly harrowing in its contrast with the working environment of those facing the customers on the front line. It's deceptively simply written, completely without pretension, yet in gently reminding us of the consumer age in which we live, extremely salutory. Thoroughly recommended.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dead end jobs,
By crow "crow" (uk) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shelf Life: How I Found The Meaning of Life Stacking Supermarket Shelves (Paperback)
For me Shelf life started as a humorous observation of people at work in a transient work place. But as i read more i started thinking about all the jobs i had in my youth that i thought were dead end or just a step to something else, and the book reminded me of all the life experiences i had during that period, and that now looking back i realise i gained so much from.
Well done Simon Parke for writing what is a humorous psychology of the work place, and a light read that makes one think...
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