When the factory closed, the tailor put a sign on his shutter: “Fittings free for interviews.”
People began arriving with borrowed shirts, frayed cuffs, and the same tight worry in their eyes. The tailor hemmed pants at midnight and replaced buttons from a tin that sounded like rain when shaken. He asked each person about the role they’d applied for, practicing handshakes while chalking lines. Interview calls turned into offers, and the shop window filled with thank-you notes written on old receipts. The tailor charged nothing; he said the city had measured him kindly once, and this was how he remembered. Months later, the factory reopened under new management and hired many of the same people who had stood under the tailor’s warm lamp as if around a small, steady fire.
