92 posts
- Work and Play
- Under 3 Minutes Read
- Under 10 Minutes Read
- Travel
- The Soup Bowl
- Short Stories
- Short Reads
- Lifestyle
- Interviews
- Featured
- Book Excerpts
- Art and Culture
- 5 Minute Read
Stories about the daily grind of work.
Nobody’s Prerogative
No one ever plans to end up as a dancer on Bourbon Street. It’s an employment choice born of pure desperation. I worked at a unisex joint called Sweet Mama’s. After only two weeks on the job, I despised every minute of my interminable shifts. I lurched around the club in stilettos like an awkward stork, as songs like “Strokin’” and “My Prerogative” pounded in the background.
The Last Day of Term
Last week David pulled his pants down in the class and farted in another boy’s face. David farts all the time. He loves the smell and sound of his own farts as do the rest of the class, chortling away when he breaks wind for the tenth time in the hour. David is also a racist, making Chinese eyes or calling the Latin-Americans dirty monkeys. David is 13 years old. There’s not much of a positive spin you can put on that ergo the utter bollocks above.
Treading the Boards
For a moment, I actually consider telling him that it’s bad form to dress up too much for a part. Then I imagine the horror on the faces of the auditioning panel as they stare at this fucked-up embodiment of a child’s nightmare. Goulée takes my hand and pulls me close to him. There’s a reek off him of booze and Tiger Balm. “Hey,” he says. “Do you know where I can find some Asian prostitutes?”
Beyond Work: Shopping Centre Santa Claus
Beyond Work documents humans at work using words and reportage photography, with no judgement or glorification. It’s an attempt at unearthing the social, cultural and functional world of work that’s invisible in everyday life. In this series, Curtis James interviews John Prior, a man who dresses up as Santa Claus at Churchill Shopping Centre in Brighton, UK.
Beyond Work: The Indoor Postal Worker
Beyond Work documents humans at work using words and reportage photography, with no judgement or glorification. It’s an attempt at unearthing the social, cultural and functional world of work that’s invisible in everyday life. In this series, Curtis James interviews Andrew James, a man who has been working as an Indoor Postal worker for the past 37 years.
The Impossibility of Buying Light Bulbs
It used to be a very simple task to purchase a light bulb. Check the wattage on the dead bulb at home, go to the store and pick a similar one from the display shelf, take it home, remove the burned-out bulb from its socket, replace it with the new one, wrap the old bulb in some newspaper, and toss it in the trash.
Beyond Work: The Refuse Collector
Beyond Work documents humans at work using words and reportage photography, with no judgement or glorification. It’s an attempt at unearthing the social, cultural and functional world of work that’s invisible in everyday life. In this series, Curtis James interviews Norman Macaulay, a man who has been working as a refuse collector for the past 27 years.
The irrelevance of TEFL
The relevance of language is lost in the world of TEFL, stumbling as we do through archaic grammar and pointless structures that most English speakers don’t know let alone use. It is a language that is not in anyway applicable to the reality of daily life and, consequently, defeats the purpose of a language.
Having sex in a swimming pool
Unprotected sex, booze, a swimming pool and and forthright businesswomen all face Laurence in a down-at-the-heel Mexican hotel.
Tiki’s Surf Station
Laurence ends up in a surf town on the Pacific coast of Mexico where he quickly realises that he is not very cool. That, plus surfers are full of shit.
Are you Married American?
Getting propositioned by an overweight Mexican man represents the furthest that my love life has progressed since arriving in Mexico, not to mention a long time before.
Fainting Distance
New in a foreign city, Carter Vance explores the modern way of meeting people. Everything is digital in our age and it doesn’t look like it will change soon.
Mile End to Clydebank
In a heroic attempt to watch Scotland lose at football, Laurence visits an East-End boozer and encounters one of his Scottish compatriots.
Goodbye yellow brick road
Frank Sonderborg goes back to 1973 and the dawn of Ireland in the E.U. An opportunity to work, drink, screw and smoke abroad proves a great draw in Europe.
Nursing: It’s not a vocation if you hate it
The endless cycle of work and hate and the world of nursing is revealed by a desperately exhausted Caitriona Murphy.
Cultural appropriation
Jeff Nazzaro talks culture on the LA subway system on his daily commute to and from work.
Breakfast shift Brexit
Laurence takes a prozaic look at his experiences with European management, and the imminent brexit and comes to the same conclusion. Work is terrible.
Sluggies: Hostel to the stars
Frank Sonderborg reflects on his son’s tricky ascent into the world of I.T. Featuring tramps, drugs, a low-cost hostel and a disgruntled Dane.
Paying Dues
Hanna Abi Akl takes a good, hard look at his work life and then chooses freedom instead.
An evening among the condos
Pursuing potential sexual relations in the vast suburban sprawl of middle America is far from easy as our hero gets lost amongst the condos.
12 fragments of a first job
Adventure, excitement and drugs. All the things that don’t appear on a resumé.
