Whether living as a caveman in a theme park or writing self-help copy for rice cracker packets, literature has many memorably awful occupations
is set aboard a gargantuan cruise ship and explores this central contradiction: a requirement of devotion to your job which is then not reciprocated with basic security.
The employees on the ship work punishing short-term “rotations”, moving around different jobs . Ingrid, the heroine, works in one of the many gift shops when she is accepted on to a mysterious employee mentorship scheme, “the programme”, run by the ship’s captain, Keith. Keith is a devoted if ill-informed follower of wabi-sabi – a Japanese aesthetic tradition that celebrates transience and decay.
A few years ago I came across a Grace Paley interview in which she stated she cannot write a character until she knows who their family are and where they get their money: a writing practice I fully endorse. And so all fictional characters generally need a terrible job. Here are my top 10 …Set on the Microsoft campus in Washington state, Microserfs explores the feudal-like work culture at the company: the employees the novel follows are the serfs presided over by Bill Gates.
In New York City during the Great Depression, an unnamed male narrator responds to letters for his advice column, which he writes under the pen name “Miss Lonelyhearts”, in perhaps the ultimate book about a terrible job. Growing increasingly despondent and burdened by the miserable New Yorkers seeking his advice, Miss Lonelyhearts searches for ways to escape – through alcohol and religion to name a couple – as he barrels towards a full-blown existential crisis.
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