Book cover titled 'The Customer is Always Wrong' by Mimi Pond, featuring a watercolor-style illustration of a storefront with a woman standing outside.

The Customer is Always Wrong

Drawn & Quarterly 2017

  • Five blue stars in a row on a white background.

    “Sharp and ambitious... If Pond’s last book was a sitcom, The Customer is Always Wrong would be an HBO drama with a Sunday night time slot.”

    - Jezebel

  • Five dark blue stars arranged in a horizontal line.

    “A book filled with ghosts... An Oakland that doesn’t exist anymore, a culture that doesn’t exist anymore, and people that don’t exist anymore, in more ways than one.”

    - Hollywood Reporter

  • Five dark blue stars in a row.

    “Mimi Pond is an incredible storyteller in any medium... But the greatest depths of melancholy, tragedy and humor are found in her quasi-memoir graphic novels, starting with Over Easy (2014) and now with The Customer Is Always Wrong, about an artist named Madge and a rogues’ gallery of restaurant customers wandering through Oaklandin the 1970s.”

    - San Francisco Chronicle

  • Five dark blue stars in a row on a white background.

    “Pond’s observant portrait of life in one’s mid-20s is keenly aware of how aimlessness can become desperation.”

    - The Globe & Mail

  • Five dark blue stars in a horizontal row on a white background.

    “Mimi Pond is a treasure, one we ignore at our own risk... Her latest book — a thick, semi-autobiographical bildungsroman called The Customer Is Always Wrong — might be her greatest work to date.”

    - Vulture

  • Five blue stars on a white background.

    “[Customer] does something I didn’t know graphic novels could do: it made me depressed, excited, nostalgic, and sentimental all at the same time.”

    - New York

A cartoon of a woman wearing an apron, holding two empty plates, and looking frustrated in a restaurant kitchen. A man is sitting at a counter in the background. The caption says, 'On top of this, tonight I worked the worst shift of my life.'

A young woman’s art career begins to lift off as those around her succumb to addiction and alcoholism

The Customer is Always Wrong is the saga of a young naïve artist named Madge working in a restaurant of charming drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Oakland in the late seventies is a cheap and quirky haven for eccentrics and Mimi Pond folds the tales of the fascinating sleaze-ball characters that surround young Madge into her workaday waitressing life.

A comic strip illustrating kitchen chaos with characters singing and dancing, referencing David Bowie and Jagger. Top panel shows two women and a man singing about gender and identity, with background kitchen shelves. Bottom panel depicts two men singing and dancing, one with a mop handle, ignoring chores, while doing everything but washing dishes.

Outrageous and loving tributes and takedowns of her co-workers and satellites of the Imperial Cafe create a snapshot of a time in Madge’s life where she encounters who she is, and who she is not.

Told in the same brash yet earnest style as her previous memoir Over Easy, Pond’s storytelling gifts have never been stronger than in this epic, comedic, standalone graphic novel. Madge is right back at the Imperial with its great coffee and depraved cast, where things only get worse for her adopted greasy spoon family while her career as a cartoonist starts to take off.

See Inside

Comic strip depicting a restaurant owner and staff discussing recent menu changes, with characters ordering and interacting, including a woman with earrings and a man in a dress shirt.
A comic illustration of a woman in a kitchen, holding two plates, looking frustrated, with a caption that reads 'On top of this, tonight I worked the worst shift of my life'.
A comic strip showing a waitress telling a customer about her headache caused by a neck tightness resembling a goiter, after a prank involving knocking on a door.
Comic strip of two women with aprons in a kitchen, singing and arguing about a dishwasher and song, with one imagining herself as David Bowie. The scene shows one woman singing while washing dishes and the other with a long utensil in her hand. The c
Comic strip of a woman in a kitchen talking to her husband, Skippy, about cleaning plates. Skippy makes a rare appearance, splashes a coffee cup, and gets angry when the cup shatters on the wall. The woman, Tony, thinks about making sandwiches and om
A comic strip showing a woman recalling a stressful night involving a mug shot, confiding in a man named Lazlo, and ending with her tip of $5.75 at a restaurant.