Today I worked for Marilyn Notkin. She had company coming and needed her storm windows removed, and knobs applied to her bathroom linen closet. I was taking out one of the windows in the sunroom when I broke it. Then I dropped one of the porcelain knobs she had special-ordered for the linen closet. “I guess this just isn’t our day,” she said when I confessed. It was the “our” that got me. It was my bad day for breaking things and her bad day for hiring me. “You don’t need to pay me,” I said. She insisted on giving me something and settled on $7. I honestly would have felt better if she hadn’t
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