the deep fryer

Welcome to Purse Book, a newsletter about reading hot little books & being a gal on the go. If you haven’t already, you absolutely may subscribe now:

A few months ago, for my toddler, I picked up a used cherry-red toy kitchenette from another family selling theirs. As we were loading it into the car, the parents said when their boys were younger, they mostly made homecooked meals in this toy kitchen, but in the past couple years, they started playing “Imperiled Restaurant”. The parents pointed to the silver toy phone that hung over the toy kitchen’s toy sink: “Someone was always calling them and saying their restaurant was about to be shut down, unless they made the fastest dinner ever made.”

I completely remember this: feeling like being in a rush, being busy, and being relied upon were absolutely aspirational sensations.

Claire Baglin’s On the Clock—translated from French into English last year by Jordan Stump—is a first-job novel about working at a fast-food drive-through restaurant. Before that, the narrator and her brother play a game similar to “Imperiled Restaurant”. It’s a food-service game with pressure, consumer dynamics, the impact of economic forces on businesses:

When the narrator starts her first restaurant job, the conversations feel similar. The communication is mostly yelling to be understood and stilling missing it:

On the Clock conjures one of the most powerful, transporting atmospheres. I never worked at a fast-food place, but did work at a very busy, almost touristy restaurant in D.C. famous for breakfast. Baglin is so good at reminding me of the intimidating fry machines, the matching aprons, the powerful commiserating glances, the repeated questions, the feeling that “daydreaming is as inevitable as it is forbidden”, the theater of looking busy, then being so so busy, the specific rules of your specific kitchen and specific floor.

One of the things that reminded me of an early restaurant job was the foreboding silence of the trash room, after the loud beeping machines and customers asking you the same questions again. We didn’t have a trash room, but we had the alley where we dropped bags outside and the silence was… blinding? It was like the power going out.

And, in all this, On the Clock contains a microcosm potency, like it’s a warning about work in general:

On the Clock was also a Purse Book Gals-On-The-Go Official Book Club Book. Here’s what a few Gals on the Go thought:

• “The most memorable coworker from the shortest job I ever had was a fellow 15-year-old at a day camp who had recently named her family cat Pillow.”— Anna

• “My first-ever job was at a Wendy’s and I quit after two hours so this book really brought me back to that brief time. I’m not above working in fast food, the vibes at that Wendy’s were just particularly bad. This topic also brings to mind I would play at the shoe store I worked at for 4 years. The game is called ‘walk around with your eyes closed and see how long it takes to bump into something.’ I still play it in the halls of UPenn sometimes when I’m bored.” — Tyler B.

• “I only miss doing the Hobart.” — Em W.

• “I read this at a similar time to reading Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness, which also takes a fast-casual restaurant as its workplace setting, and this had such a slice-of-life realism in comparison to this sweeping commentary-on-America.”— Mac A.

If you’d like to join the club, email pursebookletter@gmail.com.