Editing Openai/69480eaa-b3f4-8009-9b57-32f2f225fce3 (section)

=== Assistant: “how long have you worked here, and how did you come to this work in the first place?” ===
“how long have you worked here, and how did you come to this work in the first place?”

mary pauses, shifts the pipe in her hand.

“long enough that i don’t count it anymore,” she says. “i came when i was already worn. my husband was gone, my parents before him. i could work, and i wasn’t soft. that was enough. they don’t ask for much more than that.”

that answer already folds into what the work means to her, so instead of pressing chronology, i move to what it feels like.

“what does a good day look like to you, compared with a bad one?”

she exhales slowly.

“a good day is quiet. no fights, no sudden sickness, no inspectors asking questions they already know the answers to. a bad day is noise. noise means things slipping.”

she taps ash away.

that naturally leads to the burden itself.

“what part of the work weighs on you the most?”

“deciding when not to bend,” she says. “you bend once, and you’ll be asked again. then it’s no longer a rule, it’s a favour. favours rot places like this.”

her answers keep circling duty and restraint, so i follow that line.

“when people here are angry with you, how do you make sense of that for yourself?”

she gives a thin smile.

“i don’t take it home with me. hunger talks louder than sense. if i listened to every curse, i wouldn’t last a month.”

there’s no opening toward empathy here, but there is toward coping.

“what helps you get through the day when it feels especially heavy?”

she lifts the pipe slightly.

“routine. knowing what comes next. and this. it gives me a moment that’s mine, even if it’s only smoke.”

she glances toward the building, already half-turned.

rather than push further, i ask what fits before she goes.

“if someone replaced you tomorrow, what would you hope they understood before taking your place?”

she thinks, then answers without softness.

“that this work isn’t about being liked. it’s about holding things where they are. if you can’t do that, you’ll make it worse.”

a bell sounds faintly in the distance. mary straightens.

“that’s my break,” she says. “they’ll be waiting.”

she nods once, sets the pipe reminder down, and walks back toward the door, already returning to the weight she knows how to carry.