advice
Workplace advice for any issue, problem, or concern; from changing careers to co-working advice and decorating needs.
I Taught Grade Six Percentages While Owing Money to Seven Shops. AI-Generated.
The term I was given Every year in the third term, the Grade Six classes at our school in Polokwane do a unit our head of department calls shop maths. It is percentages dressed up in real life. Discounts, VAT, simple interest, the price of a loaf of bread going up by eight percent. The children love it because the numbers have rand signs in front of them, and suddenly a fraction becomes something they can eat or wear.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
The Posters on the Lamp Post Outside My Pharmacy. AI-Generated.
The view from the till From where I stand at the till, I can see three lamp posts, a taxi rank, the side wall of a furniture shop and a bus shelter with no roof. I have worked at the same small pharmacy in Springs for twenty-one years, and for most of those years I have looked out at the same kind of posters stuck to those lamp posts. Yellow paper, red letters, a cellphone number written large. SAFE PILLS. SAME DAY. 100% PAIN FREE. Sometimes a smudged photocopy of a woman smiling, as if she had just won something.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
I Rode Up Du Toitskloof Two Hundred Times Before I Moved to the Bottom of It. AI-Generated.
The alarm that nobody else in the house liked For about six years my Saturday alarm went off at ten past four. I would creep down the passage in socks, carrying my cleats in one hand so they would not click on the tiles, and my wife Lindiwe would say, without opening her eyes, "Drive safe, crazy." That was our whole conversation until lunchtime.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
We Threw Sister Mokoena's Farewell at Two in the Morning. AI-Generated.
The roster nobody wanted to read I saw it on the board in the duty room on a Thursday, written in her own neat capitals the way she wrote everything. Sister T. Mokoena, Ward 14, night duty, 19:00 to 07:00. Under it, in smaller letters, someone from the matron's office had added the word FINAL and underlined it twice.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
The Grid Squares That Taught Me to Sleep Where the Birds Wake Up. AI-Generated.
Columns of numbers, then columns of birds For thirty-one years I balanced other people's books in an office on Du Toitspan Road. I was good at it in the quiet way bookkeepers are good at things. When I retired, my husband Gerrit joked that I would start auditing the garden. He was not entirely wrong.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
The Fire Hall Treadmill Was Older Than Our Youngest Volunteer. AI-Generated.
The morning Denny sat down on the hose I milk cows three mornings a week for the Hostetler family outside our town in Holmes County, Ohio. The other part of my life belongs to the volunteer fire department. I have been on the roster for nineteen years.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
Seventeen Years in the Same Kitchen, and Then the Family Moved to Perth. AI-Generated.
The cake had my name on it The cake was lemon, because Mrs Pillay knew lemon was my favourite, and somebody had written THANK YOU NOMSA across the top in blue icing that ran a little at the corners because of the Durban heat. It was a Saturday in March. The boxes were already stacked in the passage with words like FRAGILE and KITCHEN and DANIEL'S ROOM written on them in black koki, and I had packed most of them myself, so I knew exactly which one held the good teaspoons.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
I Brought Pointe Shoes and a Fourteen-Year-Old Cat to the Highveld. AI-Generated.
The audition I did not think I was taking I was thirty-four and had taught ballet in the same church hall in Walmer for nine years when a woman I had once danced beside at a summer school phoned me out of nowhere. She ran a studio in Johannesburg now, north of the city, and her senior teacher was leaving to have twins. She needed someone who could take the Grade Six and Advanced Foundation girls through their exams in the coming year. "You were always the one who counted out loud for everybody," she said. "Come up and teach one class. Just one. Then decide."
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
The Morning We Took the Doorframes Off Their Hinges for Good. AI-Generated.
The house we bought for the ground underneath it The listing called it a "charming starter home with potential," which is what real estate agents in Ontario say when the floor slopes enough to roll a marble from the kitchen to the back bedroom. My husband Gareth actually did that, the first afternoon we walked through. He set a marble from his pocket on the linoleum and we watched it travel the whole length of the hallway and tap against the baseboard. The agent laughed politely. I did not laugh. I was looking at the width of that hallway and doing sums in my head.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
Fourteen Years of Giving My Sister's Address. AI-Generated.
The form at the bank counter The woman at the bank in Vredenburg asked me for proof of residence, and I slid my sister's municipal bill across the counter like I had done a hundred times before. She looked at it, then at me.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
Ouma Rachel's House Had a Different Personality in Every Room. AI-Generated.
The Keys Came in an Envelope With My Name Misspelt My grandmother always spelt my name with two Ls. Danyell. Nobody else ever did it, and I never corrected her, because by the time I was old enough to notice it had become ours. So when the lawyer slid the envelope across his desk in town and I saw DANYELL in her shaky biro, I had to step out into the passage for a minute.
By Josh Maraney4 days ago in Journal
