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Still Working

Bar Work

By Margaret J. Krauss
Published November 1, 2018 at 7:39 AM EDT
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Nicole Battle is a bartender at D’Anoia’s Eatery in Pittsburgh’s Strip District and president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild. “You can be whoever you need to be when you sit down on a bar stool,” she says. ";s:3:"uri
Margaret J. Krauss / 90.5 WESA
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Nicole Battle is a bartender at D’Anoia’s Eatery in Pittsburgh’s Strip District and president of the Pittsburgh chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild. “You can be whoever you need to be when you sit down on a bar stool,” she says. ";s:3:"uri
Margaret J. Krauss / 90.5 WESA
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Julia Erickson took her final bow as a principal dancer for Pittsburgh Ballet Theater on Oct. 28. This 2016 photo captures Erickson mid-rehearsal.
Kevin C. Brown / 90.5 WESA
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Julia Erickson took her final bow as a principal dancer for Pittsburgh Ballet Theater on Oct. 28. This 2016 photo captures Erickson mid-rehearsal.
Kevin C. Brown / 90.5 WESA
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An engineer by training, Sunu Pillai now works as a lawyer with Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr. “The biggest skill you can have is the ability to learn something and apply that to the facts at hand in a very short period of time,” he says. “I love that.”";s:3:"u
Margaret J. Krauss / 90.5 WESA
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An engineer by training, Sunu Pillai now works as a lawyer with Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr. “The biggest skill you can have is the ability to learn something and apply that to the facts at hand in a very short period of time,” he says. “I love that.”";s:3:"u
Margaret J. Krauss / 90.5 WESA
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Bryan McQuaid is a union ironworker, a musician and he trims trees out of the power lines for Duquesne Light. McQuaid says he’s not a morning person, but he’s trained himself to get up before dawn for work.";s:
Kevin C. Brown / 90.5 WESA
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Bryan McQuaid is a union ironworker, a musician and he trims trees out of the power lines for Duquesne Light. McQuaid says he’s not a morning person, but he’s trained himself to get up before dawn for work.";s:
Kevin C. Brown / 90.5 WESA

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).

Nicole Battle, Sunu Pillai, Julia Erickson, and Bryan McQuaid work in very different worlds, but talk about the performative nature of their jobs, what they think about while they work, and the feeling of having work come and go.

Still Working is our podcast about how work shapes who we are and how we see the world.

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Margaret J. Krauss
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