Putting in Work
Katrina Prow
Once upon a time, only the wealthy could afford to write. The rest of the world was too busy working. And therefore, much canonized literature often avoids the topic of work completely. Sometimes, I find myself reading and wondering, despite beautiful language and character development and honesty: Do these people work? Do they have a job? How can they afford this? Life is expensive. I remember reading Charles Bukowski’s The Post Office in undergrad and thinking, Aha! The postman! Finally a job!
We all have to do it. If we’re lucky, we find something we like, and it doesn’t feel so bad to clock in. For most of us, work will be work. I had a coworker who once said, “If this were fun, they’d call it something else.” I come from a family of workers: mechanics, cabinetmakers, secretaries, cosmetologists, truck drivers, teachers, pilots, sales associates, farmers, fishermen. We work hard even when we don’t work. My father, years retired, is in his shop, the one he built by hand in the backyard, every day. His father, eighty-eight years young, still works: “What retirement?” he’d say. My family works to live—or perhaps—lives to work. We don’t know any better. We have never been wealthy people. We work hard. We are rich in experience.
Traditional work, though it might be personally taxing, is fertile ground for a writer. All that good writing really needs is high stakes and motivation. High stakes are the foundation of a workplace: someone needs a task completed, and someone must do it because they need a paycheck. Boom, immediate tension.
When we work, something shifts in who we are, or who we thought we might be, or become. There’s a part of us that adapts or changes; we become an employee, our identity grows to include this thing we do to make money and live. And for the rest of our lives we either embrace this part of our identity or are at odds with it. I am Katrina, the professor, the waitress, the writer. In another life, I might have been Katrina, the real estate agent. Or Katrina, the mother and wife. Our careers and work shape who we become, and sooner or later one bleeds into the next. I am guilty of this: Picture late 2016, off the clock, in a country bar, debating gun control with a farmer, off the clock, me shouting, I am an educator! In that moment, I was not. I was a wine-tasting-room associate—no—at that moment, I wasn’t working, I was only drinking, I was a patron, I was a guest. Still, even out of a classroom, I wore PROFESSOR/EDUCATOR loud on my person. This was no longer a paycheck. This was who I was.
Waiting is no different. In restaurants, you are in “the Industry” like admittance to a secret club. Before the main course, after the appetizer, when the server has stopped by to check on drink number two, one might say, “I’m in the Industry,” to ensure good service, or a better pour on a second glass of wine. People in the Industry will stack plates according to size with the silverware on top, signaling