I WAS NINETEEN YEARS OLD in 1987 when I applied for a job as a kennel attendant at a public animal shelter in New England. It was the summer before my junior year at Antioch College, a private school in Ohio, and I was funding my tuition through scholarships and a series of short-term jobs like this one.
The woman who interviewed me asked a handful of questions, of which I remember only one: “Part of your job will be euthanizing animals,” she said. “Are you OK with that?”
I was not OK with that. As someone who had been working since she was twelve, however, I had a simple but effective strategy for getting jobs: say yes.
