––Was there anything pleasurable about the job at all?

Clarke: Only the stories that came out of it afterward.

Gaffney: I had to clean the spots of tooth decay and feck off the big equipment with orange oil on cotton balls. I don't know what they used that rather than something more fiercely antiseptic, but it smelled really good. Also, one time the hygienist dropped the box of silver caps, and I spent a very zen, quiet day sorting hundreds and hundreds of tiny hollow silver teeth by size and putting them back into the correct compartments in their box. Clink clink clink. That was pleasant, in a way.

Sullivan: A weekly paycheck and the easy commute.

Trynin: Phil had lots of porno magazines under his sagging couch and he often left for hours at a time, during which I did, well, nothing to speak of.


––What was the first sign that things were going south?

Clarke: Well, the first sign was that no one wore protective masks. No one, not even the bosses. The second sign was that everyone except me smoked cigarettes while they worked, which might explain why no one wore protective masks. The third sign was that we had a half hour for lunch and the guys spent their half hour chugging beer in the parking lot and then stumbled back in and climbed right into the ovens where they baked and rolled the fiberglass, or picked up the saws which they used to cut the fiberglass. There was a guy there with one arm, although I don't think he'd lost it on the job.

Gaffney: I would say it started pretty far south, but there was one particular day when it went Antarctic. The hygienist and the receptionist and the dentist were arguing more than usual that day. I sort of think the hygienist, who was very dishy, had been having an affair with the dentist, but I can't swear to that. Anyway, one day she quit right in the middle of a root canal. The patient was subjected to some very unprofessional invective shooting back and forth across her body, which I could hear from the next room, and then, the hygienist just threw down her coat and stomped out. What was even worse for the patient was that they called me in from my usual drudgery, scrubbing off the instruments, to fill in for her. The dentist thrust that sucking thing into my hand, the one that keeps the water and saliva from pooling in your mouth. Suction! he commanded, but it kept getting suck to the back of her throat like a leech and making her gag. It's not easy, what they do, dentists. I give them that. But this dentist was a real jackass. I guess he wanted the patient, who by the way was a nun in a black habit, to think that I was properly trained to be there, because he kept shouting at me, asking me what the hell was wrong with me, and didn't I know what I was doing. Clearly not.

Sullivan: Two incidents should have warned me to get out of dodge:

1. As I was eating a small cup of butternut squash soup and a roll, my boss eyed my lunch with disdain and said, “You eat a lot of food.”

2. The former editor left a notepad of her ideas about launching a new series of books based on a doll de jour, which was immediately rejected by my boss. Three months into the job in an “idea” meeting, my boss brought up the idea of launching a series based on these dolls and acted as if the idea was her own.

Trynin: There was never a sign of anything going north.