127 Comments
User's avatar
Indra.'s avatar

I loved this poem so much. It was like a song. Made me remember a lot of people from very similar experiences. It’s so true - I remember their names, but none of the bosses’. I don’t miss wearing a smock, apron, a name tag, or finding acceptable enough “black polishable shoes”.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

I don't miss handwashing with dish soap my pizza place polo!

Expand full comment
Indra.'s avatar

Any time I worked anyplace even moderately grease-adjacent, I could never get the grease smell or the stiffness completely out of the clothes, no matter what I washed with. I don’t think I’ve worn a polo shirt since (I delivered pizzas for a while too). Hadn’t thought about that in years!

Expand full comment
Andrew Paul Koole's avatar

I love how long you made this one. I can't say exactly why, but it fit the topic somehow.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Andrew.

Expand full comment
LeighK's avatar

Oops- meant story not poem for The Sandwich Maker - a story poem, or a poem story or a poetic story - whatever it was it was definitely a story on poetic steroids.

Expand full comment
LeighK's avatar

It’s good to know more about White Mike and Black Mike - this poem is a wider-spread but just as tender and scorching as “The Sandwich Maker”. I thought that poem (The Sandwich Maker) would make a great film but now I think it would make a series. You have so many stories here - I can feel and touch these worlds you invite us into. I have lived them - those jobs in the food service and office support industries. I also dabbled in credit card phone solicitations but lasted only 2 days on that one. It felt too predatory- mostly I reached very old, very lonely women who were happy to have someone to talk to. I traded that job for a job hand coloring maps, a job like no other, the best job trade ever. I do see/feel films in these poems, but they are fantastic poems without being films. The worlds you create in print resonate powerfully and personally and send me into worlds I’ve lived in and worlds I can imagine even if I haven’t lived in them. Thank you. As always.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Leigh! It would make a great short film! Ready to go to work! Ha!

Expand full comment
yvonne's avatar

Those were the good times.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

!!!

Expand full comment
Arjan Tupan's avatar

Wow.

The stories in here. Told and untold. And the humanity.

I loved my ljobs growing up. If not for the feeling of having money I had earned myself, then, and mostly, for the people I worked with.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

I loved my co-workers but not my jobs!

Expand full comment
Marcos's avatar

Love so many lines and ideas here! The turn at the very end is such a great hook. Laughed out loud at this line: “nothing

minimum about a poor

person's rage”. Made me think of a great name for a punk band that must already exist: Maximum Rage. Appreciate you as always!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Marcos!

Expand full comment
James Don BlueWolf's avatar

Lots to say about this one, but 'Full Of Heart' is my main take. Read every line and loved the "Earth Abides" italicized secondary commentary to Bosses everywhere!

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, James.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Colette.

Expand full comment
Facundo Rompehuevos's avatar

blood and bone instruments... a simple irrefutable Marxist critique. Wish I had made up that line.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you.

Expand full comment
Carol Leibiger's avatar

Those minimum wage jobs can create a cameraderie that we miss in later "more advanced" jobs. I can remember people I worked with on breaks from high school and college. I also don't remember most of my bosses' names. Thanks for this memory.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thanks, Carol. Yeah, there were good times amidst the drudgery.

Expand full comment
David Williams's avatar

Excellent. Really excellent. Been there myself. Many, many times.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, David.

Expand full comment
Chris Clarke's avatar

As someone who regularly stuns my conservationist colleagues by talking about my minimum wage career lasting until my late 30s, (“what? You DIDN’T have a trust fund??”) this piece resonated about as loud as if I had my head stuck in the Liberty Bell. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Chris.

Expand full comment
Jeffrey Lewis's avatar

Minimum wage, I've had a few of those jobs

one was a work-study job I had in college, for 3 years

cleaning, after hours in the dept of surgery in the med school

the person who hired me was kind and fair...

my pay came from the university, pocket cash

i had my own key to the labs and offices

i emptied trash and sterilized surgical instruments

this was a research lab and i still have nightmares

of dogs waking up from anesthesia and dead rhesus monkeys

i found a rat running around one evening, i thought it was part of the lab, i took him home with a clear box, shavings, water and food

he grew to be about 14" long with a dark silvery coat, no lab rat

at the end of the semester i took him to the Winooski River bank

he ran in and swam to the other shore, I called him Smee

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

That’s a crazy job! And Smee my Precious.

Expand full comment
Jeffrey Lewis's avatar

...many years ago, other minimum wage jobs: corn harvester, oil spill clean up crew, Asplund worker, spraying the equivalent of Agent Orange on power lines right of ways...working the night shift in my uncles bakery, vocational special needs teacher, carpenter...life went on: relationships, separations, divorce...I was the only attendant at my two childrens birth...

thank you for hearing me...Jeffrey

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Jeffrey. And you had some jobs that were far more rugged than any of mine.

Expand full comment
Jeffrey Lewis's avatar

thank you Sherman for your inspiration

Expand full comment
Amy Letter's avatar

This poem is speaking for my soul. Thank you, Sherman Alexie.

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Amy.

Expand full comment
Joshua Doležal's avatar

I love this so much. Every line. Beautiful, and with the refrain. Makes me want to set it to music, but it makes enough music of its own.

This says so much, and might even serve as a metaphor for working-class yearning, which so often lives with residual trauma. I can think of a dozen people, maybe more, who are like Susan. Including myself.

"Susan flirted with us young

men but would always say

that she was just practicing

for the day when her heart

healed enough to maybe

maybe maybe fall in love

again with a man her age."

Expand full comment
Sherman Alexie's avatar

Thank you, Joshua. I’ve really been pondering the romances that happen between people working the same crappy jobs.

The movie, Frankie and Johnny, is a working class romance adapted from a play. The play starred Kathy Bates but Michelle Pfieffer played the same role in the movie. So, yeah, Michelle Pfieffer as beleaguered loser in life and romance did not work.

Expand full comment