All the cowboys are cheering John Wayne. They have their hats on, and I can’t see too well. I lean forward to pat a large shoulder, ‘Could you remove your hat, please?’
‘Certainly, ma’am.’
The domino theory works. All down the row in front of me cowboys remove their hats. A hand touches my back.
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘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.
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Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
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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.
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
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Claire-Louise Bennett on her novel Checkout 19.
‘Fiction, even if it’s completely made up, does say something about how you experience reality.’
Mary Gaitskill talks about her book The Devil’s Treasure.
‘No person or doll had anatomy like that. It was, she reasoned, some mistake, a dud in the assembly line, but something about it felt special, auspicious.’
A story by Adrian Van Young.
‘When the governor forbade Havel to write essays, ordering him to write only about himself, he started a series on his fifteen different moods.’
