Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner: The Service Industry vs Social Media | Paul Robinson

"This is the corner the title of this book is pointing at. Not a phrase reached for after the fact, but a literal description of where hospitality has somehow ended up. Forced to perform somewhere it never asked to be, on terms it didn't set, because the room people move through now has a screen built into it."

The advice was always the same. Post consistently. Show your face, because faces perform. Add music, because reels with music perform better. It doesn't matter what music. Just add the music. Do a trend. Follow the format. Put everything into it, because this is where people are now, this is how they find you, this is the thing that will make the difference.

And somewhere between the first piece of advice and the last, we stopped doing the thing we were good at and started doing something we never wanted to do, in a corner we never wanted to be in, on terms we never agreed to.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner is about that corner. How hospitality ended up in it, what it costs to perform from there, and whether anyone has actually found the way out.

A short, essay-driven read for anyone who's worked in hospitality, run a venue, or watched an industry they love get quietly reshaped by an algorithm nobody asked to run it.

The second title by Paul Robinson that we've stocked, and if he keeps up this standard we might need a whole table. A book that resonates with us in retail, where the pressure to perform, to sell ourselves, starts to dominate and overshadow our primary purpose - to provide a social space, to engage with people, to enjoy this thing (we still do, but the algorithm nags and nags). The book is playfully designed too, a mix or text and image, changing page colours and font choices that allow points (often very funny) to be made clearly, elevating this already engaging paperback into something unique.

Size: 180 x120mm (paperback)

Pages: 105

Publisher: Sour Press