‘My father has trouble with his hearing and does not like to talk on the phone, so I talk on the phone mainly to my mother’.
My father has trouble with his hearing and does not like to talk on the phone, so I talk on the phone mainly to my mother. Sometimes she abruptly stops what she is saying to me, I hear a noise in the background, she says my name, and waits. Then I know my father has come into the room during her con…
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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.
‘gormandizing, gluttonous, lickerish, guttling’
Excerpts from Lydia Davis’s diary.
‘You discover during your very first lessons that the problem of singing better involves overcoming many other problems you had not ever imagined.’
‘A woman from Barnard College calls me and asks if I would please spell ‘hemorrhaging’ for her.’
‘I’d had quite enough of everything. I vowed to no longer mistake obedience for love.’
Fiction by Catherine Lacey.
‘The same way Bach’s motive splays out to the right, / swoons flatly, swans it, footnotes, follows up, / talks to itself, purls, mutters, dawdles, resumes. . .’
