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Browse Topics
Employment
Readers Write
Being Broke
The kindness of strangers, the vicissitudes of life, the merry-go-round at the mall
May 2018
The Dog-Eared Page
Calling Him Back From Layoff
I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Loyalty Rewards
In the fall of 1991 I was the lowest-ranking waiter at a steakhouse in Hampton, Virginia. My sole transportation was a Honda 350 motorcycle — halfway between a street bike and a moped — whose chain slipped at the most inopportune times.
May 2018
Poetry
The People I Work With Don’t Talk About Trump
We’re janitors, but we’re called floor-crew technicians. / We work at night. / Darius lives in a trailer with his dad / because his dad has cirrhosis and emphysema.
February 2018Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Twelve-Hour Shift
I was home on fall break in my final year at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and I needed money to pay tuition, so I was working a twelve-hour shift with my father at the ceiling-tile factory.
November 2017
Fiction
Stop Hitting Yourself
I was twenty-six, working full time at the Bagelry in suburban Chicago, avoiding the future. The future did not seem like anything you could count on. Even in suburban Chicago, where Public Works employees smiled while scraping up roadkill, people were unhappy, desperate to convince themselves of something good. Desperate.
September 2017
Photography
Three Dollars A Day
Amlan Sanyal took these photographs at a road-construction site on the outskirts of his hometown of Siliguri in West Bengal, India, near the foothills of the Himalayas. He says the workers, mostly migrants from remote villages, are often exposed to hazardous materials and run an increased risk of respiratory problems, dermatitis, gastrointestinal diseases, and other disorders.
December 2016
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Activities Of Daily Living
I stood inside the entrance of Central State Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, waiting to get patted down. It was my first visit to the institution, in 1992. I was twenty-four and had been working in the field of disability and mental health for two years.
November 2016
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