Work Work Work

The average American has thirteen jobs in a lifetime. Tom Bross has had at least forty. Don't worry—this is only Book One. You should know up front that this book is a pathetic, self-indulgent journey through a topic generally hated by everyone. Work. And he hopes you love it. He's been a pot-scrubber, a porter, a pizza guy, and a dancing genie. He's had a boss who fired him, a boss who mentored him, and a boss whose mixed-up metaphors drove him crazy. He sent out a résumé with a photo of himself bursting out of a walnut shell—caption: That's me in a nutshell—and somehow it worked.

The average American has thirteen jobs in a lifetime. Tom Bross has had at least forty. This is Book Two, where things start coming apart. You should know up front that the train comes a little off the rails in this one. There's a paycheck that doubles overnight and a CEO who eventually doubles as a federal inmate. There's a dot-com that collapses, and an engagement at Disneyland, which is not the happiest place on earth. He restocked first-aid cabinets out of a beat-up van across Eastern Washington, one knuckle bandage at a time.

The average American has thirteen jobs in a lifetime. Tom Bross has had at least forty. This is Book Three, where the dust starts to settle. You should know up front that this is the one with the happy ending—though Tom would call it more of a mostly-survived ending, which feels more honest anyway. At ten, he was a drug mule for his hippie mother and got busted by a bike cop for riding on the wrong side of the street. Not for the drugs. The drugs were fine. At twenty, he came home from four months of backpacking through Europe to find his first love had taken up with a poet, which was rude.