‘The finance officers read the answers in silence, then returned them to be burned.’
Terry Winters sat at the kitchen table of his three-bedroom house in the suburbs of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. His three children were squabbling over their scrambled eggs. His wife was worrying about the washing and the weather. Terry ignored them. He took an index card from the right-hand pocket …
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.
‘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.
‘When we talk about history, the dangers of embellishment, fabrication and wilful distortion are ever-present’
‘The song, the voice, and the heat; men on their knees, heads in hands, sobbing and now howling.’
‘The whole arc of the failed promise of development became legible in the traces of the gold rush.’
James Pogue reports from the gold mines of Mauritania.
‘The town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.’
Amitava Kumar visits a Himalayan town.
‘At midnight on our third and final date / I stepped inside her Edwardian conversion / to find a stripped-pine, bookless space.’
