––What made you seek the job out in the first place?

Clarke: Really the only reason anyone ever seeks out that kind of job: I needed the
money.

Gaffney: I didn't have working papers, and so it was really hard for me to find a job. I only had just enough money to pay my rent and school fees, and I needed to earn money for food if I didn't want to go into credit card debt. That year, I ate a lot of thin leek and potato soup that I made with my equally broke German roommates and lost a good bit of weight. I started out looking for waitressing jobs, and then for some reason my dream job was to be a bakery salesgirl. I guess because I was hungry, I wanted to work around food, but also, I had done restaurant and food service work in the US, summer jobs during high school and college. I tried to get work teaching English, too, but again, no one would hire me, so I started looking in the classified section of the paper. At the time, I was having some tooth pain, and since I couldn't afford to go to a dentist, this job at a dentist’s office caught my eye. It was right near my apartment, and I was hoping maybe it would be a way to get my cavity filled.

Sullivan: I had left a comfortable job as a project manager to complete my memoir which I had just sold to Algonquin Books. Inevitably, my financial cushion disappeared and I became desperate for employment. The job was promising because it combined two things I valued: books and the ability to pay my rent.

Trynin: Right up against my aforementioned worst job was my best job: assistant in a recording studio, a job I began at the beginning of my senior year, which, at seventeen, was about the coolest thing known to man. Not only did I work there during the school year, but I somehow convinced my silly high school to allow me to do my Independent Study Project (my ISP) at the studio, which translated into my final three months of high school taking place in a dark carpeted room with lots of smoking, various drugs, and older guys in tight pants and lip gloss. I got my worst job through the owner of this recording studio, who was Phil’s friend.


––Anything remarkable about the application/interview?

Clarke: I don't remember there being any. It's as though I woke up one day, covered with fiberglass dust and fiberglass pitch and realized that I worked in a fiberglass plant.

Gaffney: I remember feeling horrified at the interview, not really believing I was going to do this job. The receptionist was the dentist's wife. She was sickly sweet but at the same time very rigid and uptight. I decided to think of myself as a sort of a spy, and that I would learn something essential about Germanness from watching them. The whole thing was trippy, like I was a fly on the wall, not really there but watching my own experiences. I found that living abroad was often like that. Everything was surreal because I was living my life in German without being fully bilingual. I never knew exactly what I or anyone else was saying. It must be what it's like to be a young child who is just acquiring her first language. Till I could really communicate, the world just sort of seemed to happen to me, with varying degrees of my own participation. And as a result, I learned German fast.

Sullivan: It’s remarkable that I didn’t flee the interview when I heard that three people had resigned from the position within eight months. Or the fact that over lunch the current Associate Editor delivered this piece of sage advice: “Don’t do it. Don’t take the job.” Rent and the possibility of being homeless clouds judgment.

Trynin: There was no interview for my worst job. I walked in with the recording studio guy, and Phil just looked me up, then down, then up again, shrugged, and said, “So this is her?”