Workplace stories.
Stories about bosses, coworkers, customers and the jobs that shape us.
The Cardboard Box They Handed Me
I was fifty-nine years old when a man named Trent Mallory stood in my office, the one with my name on the door, and told... Read more
The Tip Jar He Skimmed Every Week
The diner smelled like bacon grease and burnt coffee before seven in the morning, and I loved it. I had worked the breakfast and lunch... Read more
The Time Clock My Manager Edited
My check was short again on a Friday in March, and I did the thing I always did when it was short, which was sit... Read more
The Teller They Never Noticed
“This is Phyllis. Just a teller. She’s furniture here, honestly. Came with the building.” Brock Tilden said that about me on a Tuesday morning in... Read more
The Teacher They Fired For Speaking Up
Superintendent Radley Kroft slid the letter across his desk without looking at me and said, “You’re a troublemaker who forgot her place.” Thirty-one years I... Read more
The Signature My Business Partner Forged
At 2:53 that Thursday afternoon, I was standing on the loading dock behind our store with both arms wrapped around a fifty pound sack of... Read more
The Register Log That Cleared Her Name
At 9:14 on a Monday morning, in front of eleven customers waiting for their prescriptions and two coworkers pretending very hard to restock a shelf... Read more
The Severance Letter They Tried To Erase
The morning I found out the money was never coming, I was sitting in a folding chair across from Grady Poehler’s desk, wearing the navy... Read more
The Hardware Store He Tried to Steal
At 2:47 that Tuesday afternoon, in the fourteenth week since I broke my pelvis and my hip in my own receiving bay, I stood in... Read more
The Inspection Report That Cleared My Name
Eleven weeks after I watched Lonnie Bratcher’s glove disappear into the jaws of Press Line Three, I sat in a Walmart parking lot in Bremmer,... Read more
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