By some accounts, we spend more than 90,000 hours at work. Some of us less, many of us, unfortunately, more. I’m interested in what people do, how they got there, what they like about it, what they don’t like about it — all of it.

Most people think their jobs are boring or pointless or bullshit, but I don’t; if you look around you, everything you see was made by someone, somehow, and that’s really interesting to me. Work is Four Letters is an occasional series — edited for brevity and clarity — highlighting what people do for work and why they do it.

Interested in talking to me about your work? Click the button below.

Work is Four Letters: Interviews

Zeke | Public Defender

When I have a good day at work, I get to know that I protected somebody from the system being cruel and racist and unfair and poised to screw up their life, in whatever way it’s poised to screw up their life.

Kathryn | Emergency Vet

I have never really wanted to do anything else. Have you ever read any of the James Herriot books? All Creatures Great and Small? I wanted to be him.

Jim Dandeneau | Executive Director

Our strength is in our relationships.

Joe | Software Developer

ChatGPT can pump out this code, but that’s not your job. Your job is knowing what code you need to write.

Ivy | Urban Planner

I watched a lot of towns in southern New Hampshire zone themselves out of existence.

Bill | Quality Improvement

Social work is, almost inherently, a radical profession.

Misty View | Library IT

Every single job I’ve had, I’ve had to prove the art and design thing quietly.

Bill | CTO

If you bang your head against the wall enough times, you will, in fact, make a hole in it, and we have a nice head-shaped hole in the wall where I fit comfortably.

Dr. Nova | Medical Science Liaison

I always wanted to work in medicine, but I knew I didn’t want to work in an office.

Karl | Cartoonist, Illustrator

Weird things, the weird people you meet, the weird conversations that you fall into in bars, this is what city life was like in the early 21st century.

Leo | Tattooer

I’ve tried to do other normal-ish kinds of jobs, and I was very, very bad at them.