The book "Meditações de um Operador de Caixa" is a social criticism book with a humorous character based on creative and ironic chronicles of a sullen and distrustful philosophe...
The book "Meditações de um Operador de Caixa" is a social criticism book with a humorous character based on creative and ironic chronicles of a sullen and distrustful philosopher in a job of cashier, which features guests in the Preface by João Moreira (screenwriter, co -author Bruno Aleixo, co -host of Anti Social), the Afterword, by Ricardo Grácio (musician and philosopher), with cover by communication designer Bruno Azevedo, published by Grácio Editor.
But I need your help to publish it!
The book is completely written, now the challenge is to "materialize it"! For that, I decided to prepare this crowdfunding campaign and raise awareness of this fantastic project. Let's do it!
Background
This is my first book, but some of the chronicles appeared about six years ago in 2007, on the form of a blog with the same name, which after a few months of operation, ceased. In mid-2012 the vision of this book appeared as a combination of stories and themes that were articulated and presented themselves to me as textual floods with distorted ideas of a Machiavellian mind of a Cashier.
What is its purpose?
Its purpose is to narrate the thoughts and misadventures of a Cashier, on a simple attempt to confirm all the prejudices inherent in this occupation and who exercises it. Nothing better than an excerpt of this book, taken from “Chapter 1: Guarantee" to explain this design:
«É de meu entender que Operadores de Caixa como eu, enfiados numa qualquer superfície (num intra-, híper-, super-, ou mega-, -store, -mercado, ou- loja), são discriminados e olhados com desdém como sendo antipáticos, ausentes, planos e ocos. No fundo, uns autómatos que estão apenas ali para receber o dinheiro dos clientes (clientes estes que nunca querem pagar e estão irritante e constantemente a perguntar por descontos, por meio de chalaças e piadolas – algumas delas sem piada nenhuma, dando vontade de este vosso anfitrião pegar neles e arrancar agónica e demoradamente o seu couro cabeludo, capilar a capilar), com um sorriso de orelha a orelha, incapazes de formular um pensamento coerente que não seja apenas a mera verbalização de “como é que pretende pagar” no princípio da transacção, e “voltem sempre”, no final da mesma. Perguntar a um caixa (diminutivo para “Operador de Caixa”) sobre o “sentido da vida” é cometer um sacrilégio, arriscando-se a obter como resposta algo como (numa daquelas vozes robotizadas em que se nota a tentativa desesperada de serem semelhantes à fluência de um discurso normal), “desculpe, mas digitou o código errado”.
Ora, vim aqui, e através deste singelo livro, confirmar precisamente estas noções. Confirmar que nós, caixas, não temos mesmo nada na cabeça; que somos planos que nem uma tábua de engomar; que não temos profundidade suficiente naquilo que pensamos, à excepção das rugas do sorriso orelhudo; e que quando falam connosco algo de estruturado e significativo ouvimos apenas “Moedas moedas notas notas moedas. Moedas, notas notas moedas moedas…notas? Moedas moedas”. »
OK, OK . Seriously, now. What is really its purpose?
Now, the book is, in a way, a metaphor for an atmosphere of alienation, in a circumstance in which the modes of emancipation and personal fulfillment, based on some sort of economic assumptions and acquired academic achievements, resulted in a big and unsatisfactory mess.
It's about the frustration that results from, generally, being required to "make a living", where this means a daily contradiction between having a “decent” life and ability to buy “stuff”, and hate what someone is doing. It is an expression of each and every one of us, or of known people, who exhaust their vitality in a Cashier job, or in any Call Center, cultivating and populating hers imaginary mental life with bloody fighting MFA , having as adversaries their managers or the clients.
Basically, it is about you and I, unhappy, unmotivated and increasingly indifferent, in an atmosphere of personal devaluation, and economic recession and social crisis.