There were a lot of regrets, but we didn’t care.
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There were a lot of regrets, but we didn’t care.
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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.
Belinda McKeon is the author of two novels, Solace and Tender. Solace won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was named the 2011 Irish Book of the Year. She lives in New York and teaches at Rutgers University.
More about the author →
‘On all sides he is surrounded by old people: jowly liver-spotted men in wrinkled suits, brown-toothed women in Thatcher drag, holding forth with tiresome decorum on coal imports, road safety, the economy of Northern Ireland.’
Fiction by Allen Bratton.
‘It’s when things fail to return to normal, that finally you get it: this is normal.’
Gary Indiana on growing older.
‘He is an ancestor, he has had his son, he has lost possession of the world.’
Fiction by Allen Bratton.
‘I looked up at the sky. A few grey cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.’
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