This is The Shorts, and you're listening to The Dirt Back Daries.

I am a dotted line, and you fill me in with whatever you like.

Now I'm just going through the mold.

Being a climber, I thought I was sad.

Though my she-boss at the bread store polished her nails and declared climbing,

stupid, her husband was a climber of sorts, used to climb anyway.

He was still fit and lean, and his eyes turned bright when we talked climbing.

I liked him.

A former corporate lawyer, he got fed up and quit, and now they made bread.

I worked dead-end jobs, dabbled in writing, and went climbing.

This job would be perfect, perhaps even long-term, because it was simple, came with food,

and the early mornings would train me to love, rather than hate, the alpine stark.

Right.

Surely this represented more than just another stop on the deadbeat tour?

Besides, being a friendly guy and smarter than the average deadbeat employee, or so I figured anyway,

the dead-end jobs often saw me as a real peach.

For my first job after grad school, for example, Taco Bell enthusiastically brought me onto their team.

A week into it, I realized that the bell no longer had anything to offer me.

Then, it pizza hut for two years, I was such a fine waiter that the boss let me make my own schedule.

I'd climb all day, come busting through the doors for my evening shifts, scarf leftovers off of plates,

and take my employee meal home for the next day's lunch.

I tipped out the cooks, helped the other waiter's bust their tables, and comprehensively bitched out customers who deserved it regularly.

...