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. He went behind the scenes at Jelly Belly and spent an afternoon in the lab tasting jelly beans flavored like booger, earwax, and burnt rubber. He sang a State Farm jingle at the worst possible moment. And somehow on the morning of an interview, he rubbed sports cream into his eye. He also started catching feelings for a coworker who was—by his own panicked math—far too young for him, so naturally he did the mature thing and pretended it wasn't happening.

Work Work Work is a memoir told one paycheck at a time, by a guy who has loved most of his jobs, hated a few of them, and is still trying to come up with a clean answer to "What do you do?" If you've ever stared down a Monday morning and thought what the hell am I doing here—pull up a chair. Tom’s just getting started…