In September Favourite Teacher handed out workbooks, and said to us, when you’re done with these exercises you can go out on the field and have free play. Free play is when you have fun instead of playing kickball.
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Americans, speaking of foreign lands, often say, 'It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.'
‘ My stunningly crummy apartment–there were big holes in the walls and I lay awake nights worrying about how they got there’.
‘None of these high-falutin pansy-ass would-be 'technologies' are going to save literature.’
‘North by Northwest isn't a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it's about what happens to his suit.’
‘Against each wall stands an ornate throne—junk, dark Victorian junk, pulled by crowbar twenty years ago from the old lodge in the doomed downtown. Sitting on each is a battered looking Elk in a frayed tuxedo or black suit, his shoes cracked as the skin around his eyes. You feel sure they will sleep, and soon.’
‘Lu Dong is a fifth-rate actor – that’s by his own ranking system.’
Fiction by Shuang Xuetao, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
