The Boring Job

Neil works in the ticket office at a train station in Manchester. He sells tickets from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon. For five years, he thought his job was really boring. "The same questions, the same trains, the same faces," he told his wife every evening. "I'm so bored."

His wife, Carla, was a bit tired of this. One day she said, "Your job isn't boring. You're bored. That's different." Neil didn't understand. "What can I do? Nothing interesting happens in a ticket office."

The next morning, a very old woman bought a ticket to Blackpool. "First time in sixty years," she said. "I met my husband there." Neil was surprised. In the afternoon, a young man bought two tickets to London. His hands were shaking. "I'm going to ask her to marry me," he said. Neil was extremely interested.

That evening, Neil didn't say "I'm bored." He took a notebook and wrote about the old woman and the young man. He wasn't sure why, but it was exciting. The next day, he listened more carefully. A tired doctor, a boy with a guitar, a man who was going to see his mother for the first time in ten years.

Neil wrote a story every night. His wife read them. "These are amazing," she said. "Neil, these are really good." Now Neil has a blog with two hundred stories, and thousands of people read it.

The ticket office is exactly the same, but Neil is never bored. "The job was never boring," he says. "I just wasn't looking."