Blown Sideways Through Life - Softcover

Overweight and depressed, Claudia Shear eats her way through 64 menial jobs in this true account of a woman's life at the edges of society. Artist's model, receptionist at a whorehouse, waitress, proofreader, Shear is the underling's underling and gives us a droll, insightful and ultimately frightening look at the inner lives of those who serve us. Do you ever wonder what the person who asks you, "Would you like fries with that?" is thinking--about you and herself? Shear knows--and tells us with wit and compassion. A thought-provoking and funny glimpse of the nameless workers who make the world go round.

Claudia Shear is a misfit, a funny, over-weight, unconventional worker-for-hire who blew through 64 jobs only to discover the best of all the "altenatve dentities" she sought through was her own. Hers is a book for all of us who remember the nail-biting, the site-specific camaraderies, the war stories that happen on any job one has to take for a paycheck. Shear has worked as a pastry chef, a nude model, a witess, a waitress (a lot), a receptionist in a whorehouse, an Italian libretto translator, and an operator for an answering service among many others. Her life so far makes for a hilarious tour de resume. But underneath the fun is a universal lesson learned about life in the workplace, a lesson that caused her one-woman show to be nationally celebrated by Peter Jennings, Regis and Kathy Lee, Connie Chung, and Charlie Rose: "You talk to the people who serve you the food the same way you talk to the people you eat the food with. You talk to the people who work for you the same way you talk to the people you work for. It's a one-size-fits-all proposition." With a dazzling narrative talent that is the trademark of a born writer, Shear transforms her phenomenally successful chronicle'of employment into a real book that, as Frank Rich said in The New York Times, "will stop your heart."