Six Stories About Our Lines of Work

• Julie Beck recalled her time working at a pizza parlor. (“We were supposed to weigh our cheese in a little metal bowl on a little metal scale and limit each pie to a scant few ounces. I felt the customers should get their money’s worth of mozzarella, so I would grab it by the fistful and plop it on with abandon.”)

• A butcher took Logan to a meat market. (“Most people also don’t get their food from crazy ass places in Chinatown that have frogs and turtles.)

• Caroline Leung looked back on her time as a media intern. (“Despite having most of my needs being taken care of, I still trolled Craigslist for paid, but meaningless, work. Money and work are both means of validation, and while I had the latter taken care of, I wanted to earn the former.”)

• John Wenz had 40 jobs. (“For three days, worked for the math department as a web editor despite having failed college algebra repeatedly.”)

• Michelle Markowitz might have worked for an arms dealer. (“He was about to open a door, when he slammed it shut, leaned against it and intensely said, ‘Do you know how to operate firearms?’ I was terrified.”)

• Markham Lee worked as a security guard at a Metallica concert. (“We let him run past the cardboard boxes and then another guy and I tackled him, the other ticket agents didn’t even flinch or pay him any attention.”)