Typical Day
Taylor Swifthands wakes up at 7:10AM and fixes a cup of black coffee and scrambled eggs. Taylor can't afford a car (and nobody needs one in the city anyway), so she walks briskly to the nearest bus station. Two buses and one short metro trip later, she's standing in front of JC Nickel, the large department store where she works.
She presses the elevator button to B2, where she and some of the other tailors work for slightly north of minimum wage altering customers' garments. Sitting down to her alterations desk 8:00AM, Taylor sighs.
After four years in a pretty rough public high school, taking care of her younger siblings every evening, Taylor had finally made it into the job market. She wasn't too keen on going to college and instead wanted to find a job working with her hands.
Luckily, she had a family friend who worked as a tailor and hired Taylor to help in her shop. One year turned into three years, and suddenly three years of tailoring turned into her profession.
While she waits for her mind to wake up and her fingers to warm up, Taylor crosses some of the most basic alterations off her list.
She spends forty minutes adjusting a hemline on a woman's business skirt, and another twenty minutes using a short ruler to mark buttonhole spacing on a nice button-down whose purchaser had evidently been dissatisfied with the button placements on the original. By 9:00AM, she's through the basics—now the fun begins.
At 12:00PM, she takes her usual break with some of the other tailors. Over their usual food court meal, they discuss the status of their portfolios. Unfortunately for Taylor, she really hasn't been working on hers lately. Still, she tries to stay perky and laughs when everyone else laughs.
Taylor returns to her desk at 12:30PM. After a furtive look around to make sure no one's watching, she pulls a portfolio from the very bottom of the drawer. This is the difference between becoming a successful, independent tailor and being stuck in a department store for life.
Unfortunately, Taylor's job in alterations doesn't give her much opportunity to add to her portfolio. Nothing she does here is original—and what potential customer's going to be impressed by a routine hemline adjustment?
Hearing her boss round the corner, Taylor quickly shuts the portfolio and hides it under a pile of fabric on her desk. Her plan to go independent won't work out if she's suddenly unemployed without a full game plan.
After some more detail work, she goes to meet a JC Nickel customer who needs a (very expensive) suit adjusted. The customer is already wearing the suit when Taylor knocks on the dressing room door at 2:00PM.
As the customer turns to face her, she's shocked to see just how ill-fitting the suit is. Taylor does a quick survey: the pants are too tight in the crotch, and too long at the bottom; the jacket pulls too tightly across the chest; and the underarm area's just hanging all loosey-goosey.
Taylor bites her tongue but thinks, Why are you buying this? The customer seems to read her mind and explains that, first of all, it's a designer suit (designed for someone else, thinks Taylor) and second, it's a size four and she's always been a size four (except today apparently).
Everyone thinks Taylor's really nice, but that's only because no one knows what goes on inside her head.
When the customer leaves, Taylor sets to work. These types of orders need to be done within a week, max—and ideally much quicker than that. After a couple hours crouched under her bright light, pinning and un-pinning and re-pinning, Taylor's eyes need a break. She directs her attention to a huge, three-foot pile of button-downs waiting for alterations.
At 5:00PM, Taylor clocks out. One short metro trip and two buses later, Taylor's back at the room she sublets. After eating the rest of yesterday's tuna salad straight from the plastic container, she washes her face, changes into her ironically ill-fitting JC Nickel nightshirt, and sits down to do some independent work for herself.
She needs to pull overtime like this if she wants to build her portfolio...and coincidentally she also needs an awesome new dress for when she shakes off the work week at the club this weekend. Win win.