“He’s not going to fire you,” Marge says brightly. “Don’t worry about that.” “Oh, I’m not worried about it. There’re millions of jobs out there. Look at the want ads.” Denise turns partway around to regard me blankly from the side of her face. Don’t they look at the want ads? Don’t they realize that the sheer abundance of them means they’ve got Ted by the short hairs and could ask for almost anything—like, say, $7.50 an hour, reckoned from the moment they show up in the morning to the moment they finish processing rags at the end of the day? “But we need you,” Marge says. And then, as if that
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