This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

The economy seems to be showing some real signs of life.

And lots of people are finally returning to the labor force, 850,000 in the month of June alone.

But at the same time, a lot of people are resigning from their

jobs, and some of those people are even changing careers. So maybe it is time to become the ski

instructor that you've always wanted to be. With all this job mobility in the air, we asked three

writers to tell us about their most memorable jobs that they've had in the past. Now, I don't mean

the jobs that you put on your resume on the gliding career path to success, but the ones that

really stick out, the ones that you're still telling stories about 10, 20, 50 years later. First off,

Gillian Flynn, who wrote Gone Girl and many other books.

My parents were a very budget-minded couple, so I did not have a lot of extra spending money, so a job was always in the picture. And I went through a whole series of jobs

in my high school years. I first tried being a shop girl,

which was absolutely completely pathetic because I was pathologically shy. So I never really talked to people. I would kind of hover near them, which everyone loves to have when they're trying on clothes and feeling vulnerable

as some idiot nearby, silently smiling and shrugging their shoulders.

So I got fired from that one.

That's the only job I've ever been fired from for cause.

And I, for years, I would hire on at Honeybaked Ham, especially when they had their big holiday rushes.

And so my job was basically a ham display girl.

I was like the Vanna White of Ham.

So all these jobs I feel like kind of prepared me to take on the most perfectly

80s job ever, which was to sell frozen yogurt at a mall by my house. And it being in the 80s,

it was a very fast times at Ridgemont High kind of moment. It was very cool to be in the center of the small.

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