The Last Customer
In a diner that's been open since 1962.
Work
What we do for a living, and what it does to us
Shifts, careers, side jobs and the strange intimacy of the people you happen to work beside.
The clock is a character in almost every one of these.
I make $100,000 a year.
One man's grocery run, one family's monthly arithmetic, and the quiet collapse of the six-figure promise.
Work is filed on weekdays because that is when it happens. We are less interested in careers than in shifts — the hours themselves, and the people you end up standing beside for years without ever visiting their house.
What does the job do to the person doing it?
The shift
Clocks, breaks, closing procedures, the last hour.
Coworkers
Accidental intimacy with people you did not choose.
The cost
What the work takes that no one lists in the offer.
More from Work
The third shift starts when the second one ends.
For a growing number of people, a full-time job is the thing they do before the other job.
There were once more than 2,000 of them.
The rise and quiet disappearance of the discount store that anchored a thousand small towns.
I quit the job I'd wanted for ten years.
A personal essay about getting the thing, and then handing it back.
The clock is a character in almost every one of these.
Reading Work
Filed weekdays
Reported pieces and short fiction
Wages named, hours counted
No hustle, no productivity
The complete Work file
Browse every section
Good stories.Once a week.
Stories about the ordinary things that mean the most.