There’s a scene in Mike Scalise’s The Brand New Catastrophe where Scalise, twentysomething and struggling to find full-time work in New York City, arrives in Central Park for a job interview. In short, it’s a catastrophe. Scalise, having spent days imagining this job—and its benefits package—as his last chance, a final lifeline into honorable employment and actual health insurance, arrives sickly with nerves. Distracted by an errant German shepherd, he admits to the interviewer that he just “wants a job, any job.” She gives him the look, an expression of resigned disapproval Scalise practically majored in.
