Dear Reader,

We asked you about Odd Jobs, and people had A LOT to say. We expected summer camp, but what’s with the birds? In this issue, you’ll find a semiotic deconstruction of the flamingo, the feeding habits of vultures, and tales of violence at the Bird Sanctuary. We have more questions. How did you all find yourselves picking boutique corn in rural corners of Montana, peddling crepes and bagels on California side streets, disseminating mulch around the Old North End, caring for fragile plants and more resilient children, and bagging your power-drunk ex-theater teacher’s organic produce?

In the stories that follow, you will catch snippets of conversations from behind the gas-station cashier counter, stolen between the cigarettes and the soda fountain. You will hear reports from inside Midwest family cars at 3 a.m. There are some jobs so unbelievable our authors doubted their own memories – was there really a child-run mock metropolis hidden in the south Florida sprawl? Are the two editors who visited this theme park misremembering? Sometimes, the job is so odd that your boss doesn’t remember you either. These odd jobs come to you from the unfinished crevices of DIY home renovations and the bounced checks of a dog-walking scam.

The idea for this issue’s theme emerged from our editors’ own strange time in our suspended condition as not-quite adults — doing borderline exploitative tasks we know we’ll never get to do again. At least you can spin it on LinkedIn… fake it till you make it, right? We like to think these odd jobs, at the margins of social acceptability, say something about the world. Or at least, the way these authors see the world — stranger and more beautiful than you could ever know without looking in the cracks.

We’d offer you a job but our budget just got cut.

– Cipher