Servo: Tales from the Graveyard Shift

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? Maybe a dead-end retail role, or a nightmare stint in hospitality? For David Goodwin, that answer is as clear as the glass on a pair of automatic doors. Fresh out of high school and looking for work, he thought he’d lucked out with an easy, brainless gig. Little did he know he was facing six years of service at the apotheosis of bad jobs: the graveyard shift at a Werribee Servo. What follows is an outlandish descent into madness and back to reality as Goodwin details his experiences on the frontlines of Melbourne’s derelict, drug-addled and deranged, writing with no shortage of humour and linguistic flair.

Goodwin is a natural-born storyteller, effortlessly compelling whether he’s talking about the draconian policies of his bosses, the mad ramblings of his regulars or his own forays into chemical-induced debauchery. On their own, each anecdote feels impossibly strange, but taken together, they build a convincingly absurd world where ravers and tradies cross paths under the watchful gaze of the most jaded cashier known to man. It helps that Goodwin is clearly an unabashed language lover, generously seasoning his prose with casual eloquence and vivid metaphors – after a while you just start to hear Goodwin’s lively voice taking you along for the ride, like an old friend at the pub.

However, the true secret to Servo’s brilliance is that beneath its irreverent, gonzo stylings it’s actually a heartfelt, coming-of-age memoir. Goodwin’s journey from wide-eyed rookie to seasoned ‘console operator’ is full of euphoric highs and bone-tired lows; a journey which takes him to dingy clubs and to magnificent forests, but always returns him to one place. An outer-suburbs servo might not be the likeliest place to discover your place in the world, but that’s exactly what Goodwin does as he fights to survive each sleepless shift while keeping his sanity (mostly) unscathed.