Still unconvinced of my suitability, he reminded me that the job involved backbreaking work and that the average person could not hack it. He warned me that I would leave the job daily with various aches and pains. I countered that I worked out regularly and that I was not afraid of a strenuous job, though I must admit I was starting to worry.
To prove my point, however, I showed him scars on my hands. “Are these the hands of someone who is not used to work?” I offered, looking him squarely in the eyes. The part I left out was that the scars did not come from hard labor but from falling on glass when I was in the third grade.
I was working so hard at creating a working-class persona that I felt like a fraud. But my responses did the trick, and he asked when I could start. —Eugene Thompson —Moonlighting (Chronicle)
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shades of Kevin Spacey's character in "American Beauty".
I look back fondly on some of the menial jobs I had because they required little responsiblity and offered lots of comradeship with the other wage slaves.