Boredom leads to evil, but in the meantime there was an August when I still loved my husband. It went like this.
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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.
‘To go is always to go somewhere; returning, you return to nowhere. That’s the way it is.’
‘I came to feel that I was hiding here in the physical world, like a child who hides in a computer game to escape a more consequential reality.’
Tao Lin on his spiritual awakening, via psychedelics and the literature of near-death experiences.
‘I wasn’t against fashion; I wasn’t one of those people who need to make it into a whole statement about their intellect.’
Fiction by Zoe Dubno.
‘They say it takes a village to raise a child and the same can be true of killing.’
Amber Husain on meat.
‘He came to see, after a long agony, that it would be best to give it up.’
A new story by Lucy Ives.
Peshawar is a mess. And last winter—the winter before September 11 became a significant date,...
