As soon as I walked in, I knew he wanted to touch it. It was a small lift, just a box on a rope really. You could hear the churning of the wheel high above, and the whole thing creaked as it wound you up through the building.
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.
‘The year I'm talking about, the year my sister left (or whatever you choose to call it), I was twenty-one and she was seventeen’.
‘My voice may grate your nerves again.’
A poem by Harryette Mullen.
‘Your friends might never know you intimately. There are those that will know you intimately but never be your friend.’
Jia Pingwa on friendship.
‘I promise you, the committee only looks at two things: how feasible a proposal is, and what it could actually do for the environment.’
A bureaucrat and an entrepreneur discuss environment-saving proposals in a short play by Si’an Chen, translated by Jeremy Tiang.
‘On the doorstep, in the glare of the security lamp, was a thin, bearded man holding a black, breathless terrier.’
Fiction by Joe Stretch.
‘In the end, the real world always finds a way to live up to rumor.’
Fiction by Jianan Qian, translated by Jianan Qian and Alyssa Asquith.
