I can help who's next! Hi! How can I help you today? What can I get for you? How are you?
I can help who's next! Hi! How can I help you today? What can I get for you? How are you?
Fresh out of art school with a pile of debt and a broken heart, Della moves into her parents’ basement in suburban Nebraska and lands a “temporary” job as a deli clerk. Struggling to smile under the small talk of corporate commands, she contends with mind-numbing 8-hour shifts, bumbling management, ruthless secret shoppers, and a crew of misfit coworkers. Despite the monotonous drudgery, can Della stay true to herself and find creative inspiration in a life behind the counter?
With inimitable quirkiness and fever dream flair, Ella Weber’s debut novel is a hysterical yet heartfelt parody of millennial plight, Midwest mediocrity, overweening artistic ambition, and the inanity of the daily delicatessen grind. As inventive and entertaining as autofiction gets, The Deli Diaries is an unforgettable slice of life unafraid to ask the big questions: Who ham I? What ham I? Where ham I?
Published by Latah Books
For starters it’s a ridiculously hard word to spell.
Smiles for Aisles
Smiles for Aisles
Corporate displays our smile scores weekly. We kindly ask that all employees smile for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and fifty two weeks a year. This is a store with a permanent smile. Unfortunately during a sad point in my career, I received a record low secret shopper score, primarily for not smiling. Della you received a record low secret shopper score a 31 out of 100 for not smiling.
Now this is a store with a permanent smile.
Now this is a store with a permanent smile.
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In an attempt to earn my way back into the good graces of HR, my self imposed penance is to create a smiley a day with the materials at hand and I will practice my smile in the bathroom during my 30 minute lunch break.
Three existential slices of ham hover above me. Who ham? What ham I? Where ham I?
Three existential slices of ham hover above me. Who ham? What ham I? Where ham I?
“Hey Della, why don’t you go on break now.”
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I stop in roundabouts and ask myself What is life all about?
nce upon a time, on a cold blustery night, during a deli shift from hell, a brand-new, wet and rubbery 6 lb. Oven Roasted Chicken slipped off the slicer scratch-free. I poked a smile in his face and asked my boss if I could keep the dirty little chicken head. He mumbled, “Sure.” At $9.99 a pound, that’s a sixty-five-dollar friendship value right there, for free. Personally, I like to think the poor chicken was just trying to save itself from being another neglected slice of meat in some ungrateful kid’s school lunch. I asked the chicken’s pronouns before proceeding to take thirty-seven selfies together, marking the beginning of OR and I, the origin of “us.”
