Still Working

An ice machine breaks; a cook cuts her hand; the kitchen runs out of a key ingredient early in the night. After 20 years in restaurants, bartender Nicole Battle has seen it all. No matter what is going on behind the scenes, “you're expected to be on all the time,” she said. “It’s ... insanely mentally challenging sometimes.”

Before a ballet can be performed, dancers need to know their moves, tickets must be sold, and musicians hired. Oh, and the performers need something to wear.

Stay on your toes. For Julia Erickson, a principal dancer with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, this phrase is more than metaphor. It’s part of her job. And one that requires a special tool.

To “set a high bar” is one of those stock phrases moms and bosses use to talk about expectations and achievement and the importance of giving your all. In this episode of Still Working, 90.5 WESA’s series about work, we took that bar literally. We shadowed a lawyer (who must pass the bar to practice), a ballerina (who begins class each day at the barre), an ironworker (“Rebar makes the world go round"), and a bartender (not going to explain that one).

Steve Kelley spends his nights cleaning offices in downtown Pittsburgh. He’s a union janitor with SEIU 32BJ. While he makes his way through three huge floors, he thinks about music; he plays heavy metal. “It’s my heart, it’s my passion,” he says.

Emergency room physician Dr. Tom Martin doesn’t mind living in the past, a little bit. When he goes home, he spends time thinking about his night and patients. But it isn’t what went right that he wants to remember.

Being prepared is not just a motto for the Boy Scouts. When the mercury plummets, evening breaking news reporter Andrew Goldstein of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette knows the value of having the right tool for the job.

As far as Justin Bongiorni is concerned you can keep your toast, your gourmet sandwiches, your extravagant grilled cheese. For the head baker at Allegro Hearth Bakery, bread stands alone. “I don't need to add anything to it, really. It's fine just like that for me.”

Steve Kelley spends his nights working more than twenty stories up. It can be scary sometimes—all alone, high off the ground in Pittsburgh’s Gateway Center—especially when he can see lightning flash through the huge windows. But most often it’s peaceful, says the union janitor with SEIU 32BJ: “Just the work and me.” Night work is essential to the economy, but it can often be invisible, even hazardous.

Baseball is full of disappointments: strikeouts, fielding errors, hitting into double plays. And in the minors, those moments carry extra weight; every guy has his sights set on getting called up to the big leagues. For Jonathan Schwind, there was only one way to stay positive through a long season: take it one day at a time.