Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift

We’ve all filled up at a servo, but what’s it like behind the counter, late at night, as a plethora of unhinged and maniacal souls totter in through the parting glass? David Goodwin worked the graveyard shift for six years in his home suburb of Werribee, and this is his hilarious and darkly mesmeric account of what happens behind the anti-jump wire.

Most of us have done our time in the retail trenches, but service stations are undoubtedly the front line, as Melburnian David Goodwin found out when he started working the weekend graveyard shift at a servo in his home suburb of Werribee.

From his very first night shift, Goodwin absorbed a consistent level of mind-bending lunacy over his six years: giant shoplifting bees, balaclava-clad assailants hurling water bombs of different-flavoured cordial through the sunroof of a BMW blasting Roxette’s Joyride, and synchronised anarcho-goths high on MDMA loosing large rats in the store from their matching Harry Potter backpacks.

Goodwin grew to love his servo, assuming the role of nocturnal ringleader of the depraved halogen circus, handing out free pastries and slurpees as he grew a backbone and finally became street smart.

From psycho meatheads on a steady a diet of homemade speed and strong psychedelics to guitar-strumming, self-appointed mystics trying to grift their way to a better world, the creatures that tottered through the parting glass proved that servos will always attract those a few litres short of a full tank.

For anyone who’s ever toiled under the unforgiving fluorescent lights of a customer service job, Servo is a side-splitting and darkly mesmeric coming-of-age story from behind the anti-jump wire that will have you gritting your teeth, then cackling at the absurdity, idiocy and utterly beguiling strangeness of those who only come out at night.

Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Imprint: Hachette Australia
Publication date: 28/02/2024