Clocking In for the Long Shift
Session Title
Humanities and Fine Arts
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Faculty Mentor
Dustin M. Hoffman, Ph.D.
Abstract
Enter a restaurant. Walk past the host stand. Ignore the proffered menu. Walk through the crowded wake of white linen shrouding dark tables. Bull towards the restroom. Do not stop to admire the gallery of good bites framed in white china. Pass beyond the pale. Crash through the door into the kitchen. Dodge the flying knives, the popping oil. Do not stop to shout insults with the dripping cooks. Go one further. Bang through the escape-hatch door. That is where the story happens. Out with the bloated dumpsters, the beach of cigarette butts, the sun that you swear is not the same sun from before. That is where you start clocking in for the long shift. This flash fiction piece asserts that the small moments of mundane life are important, even momentous. In an age when the literary audience is no longer comprised solely of the elite, the heroization of the prince, the epic hero, or the demigod is no longer congruous. Focusing on the extraordinary in the mundane, this story explores the beauty of the dish-washers, the nearly-homeless, and the invisible.
Course Assignment
WRIT 307 – Hoffman
Previously Presented/Performed?
World of Food Interdisciplinary Conference, Winthrop University, February 2019
Start Date
12-4-2019 1:15 PM
Clocking In for the Long Shift
DIGS 114
Enter a restaurant. Walk past the host stand. Ignore the proffered menu. Walk through the crowded wake of white linen shrouding dark tables. Bull towards the restroom. Do not stop to admire the gallery of good bites framed in white china. Pass beyond the pale. Crash through the door into the kitchen. Dodge the flying knives, the popping oil. Do not stop to shout insults with the dripping cooks. Go one further. Bang through the escape-hatch door. That is where the story happens. Out with the bloated dumpsters, the beach of cigarette butts, the sun that you swear is not the same sun from before. That is where you start clocking in for the long shift. This flash fiction piece asserts that the small moments of mundane life are important, even momentous. In an age when the literary audience is no longer comprised solely of the elite, the heroization of the prince, the epic hero, or the demigod is no longer congruous. Focusing on the extraordinary in the mundane, this story explores the beauty of the dish-washers, the nearly-homeless, and the invisible.
