I said tomatoes
A kitchen at a party. A paper plate of crisps in one hand, a can going warm in the other. A woman by the fridge I'd known for four minutes.
"So, what do you do?"
I handed over my job title like a passport at a border. A little apology in it, a little puff. Project manager. Software. For warehouses.
She looked at it and waved me through, and then we talked about warehouse software for ten minutes. Neither of us works in a warehouse. At one point she said "inventory" and I said "exactly", and I still don't know what I agreed to.
The job is fine. It's ordinary and I do it well. It pays the rent and the seeds.
On the walk home I went back over it. She asked what I do. She never said for money. I added that myself.
We do this all the time. Somewhere along the way, work took the word "do". Now it means whatever is on the lanyard, even at a party, even with a mouth full of crisps.
What I do, most of the summer, is tomatoes. They grow on the back step and along the strip of grass by the shed. This year, eleven plants, four tomatoes. One of them split. I go out and look at them every evening, which doesn't seem to help.
Your job is what you do for money. It doesn't have to be your answer.
At a barbecue in June a man asked, and I said tomatoes. No job after it, no explaining. He put his drink down and said one word. Blight. We stood there for twenty minutes. He had opinions about copper spray. He had photos of a leaf.
Try this. Next time someone asks what you do, answer with something that isn't your job. The garden, the Sunday swim, the bad guitar. Let the job come second, or not at all. One answer, at one party.
The first time, the job title will be right there, ready to go. Let it wait. Whoever asked will be fine. They didn't come to the party to talk about warehouses either.
He came round in August for a bag of them. It was a small bag.
He still doesn't know what I do for a living.