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Like a Dog: A Memoir by Vincent Francone
Vincent Francone’s “Like a Dog,” as in “Work like a dog,” is a great read. A working class guy who comes up on the South Side of Chicago and moves north in a quest a better life, Francone takes us on a dazzling tour of minimum wage America over the last couple of decades. He’s has done it all; “I’ve tried telemarketing, copy writing, editing; I managed a courier center, I conducted background checks on potential healthcare employees, and worked in a stock room. . . .” And that’s before he goes to university and winds up, like so many other academics today, as a part-time instructor in a string of economically stressed public colleges. Francone’s descriptions of boring and soul-destroying work, the places where it’s done, and the people who do it are beautifully written, wildl entertaining, deeply poignant, and mysteriously inspiring. This is what it’s like to be alive in these times, “Like a Dog” insists, this is the battlefield of everyday life. These are your adversaries: mindless repetitive work, bored and boring co-workers, feckless bosses, plus your own inclination to work as little as possible, spend every penny you earn right away, and escape from bad job to bad job, without ever climbing any ladder that might lead to better paid if equally meaningless work. Best of all, this post-industrial odyssey down mean streets and corridors to mean offices and classrooms, dingy apartments, and dead end bars is full of gritty life. Francone is a gifted story- teller with a great, street smart voice. His protagonists and characters are brilliantly drawn.. And in their bafflement and self-destructive resistance to the work regieme that claims them they press back in an utterly realistic way against our recession-bred equation of employment, almost any employment, with salvation. Studs Terkel would have loved this book--John McClure, Phd
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Published January 1, 1708
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September 15, 2018
Some of you may remember the now almost twenty-year-old book by Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. At first, it seems that Vincent Francone’s Like a Dog might be based on this premise. It’s not. And yet, it kind of is. Whereas Ehrenreich interviewed her subjects as a sociologist-reporter, Francone’s subject is himself. It is a study of his life and intermittent homelessness as he wastes away in nowhere jobs, making almost no money, doing menial labor.
“I am not one who has ever thought in terms of a career,” he tells the reader on page 61. “Careers are for people with ambition. This is not to say that I am a bad worker or that I lack motivation, but I have never considered any task to be my calling. Quite simple: all work is work. Calling a job a career makes it no more palatable.” And a little further down he gets to the point: “We go to school so that we can become something, but that something is always defined by our careers. This seems wrong.”
Ah, but the reader is wiser and, from holding the book with his name on it, knows the truth: that like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Vince was always who he intended to become. Or was he? Like a Dog is the coming-of-age story of this young antagonist who does have ambition: he dreams to be a writer, yet he is beaten down by the system while clinging to that dream. Stripped down to its core, no matter what the job, Francone’s work is sheer survival. Sometimes, you wonder why he bothers.
But don’t think it’s all a downer—far from it. Francone’s language is always smart but never pretentious, and gritty and real without gimmickry. Like a Dog is a classically urban twenty-something tale in the way that Vincent drinks too much, smokes too much, carries too much around the middle and flees the ever-present shadow of his family looming in the Chicago suburbs, inviting him to holiday dinners. But he also doesn’t touch drugs, and he’s an auto-didactic who, in earlier years, couldn’t keep it together for college but was better-read than all of his instructors put together.
The mood of the book, and the charm of Francone’s story-telling is summed up in a conversation Vincent has with his less-than-enchanting girlfriend Sophie on page 24:
“At some point during the date, Sophie would occasionally decide it was ‘time to talk.’
‘What now?’
‘I just wonder what it is you plan on doing.’
‘About what?’
‘Your life. That’s what. It’s like you have no plans other than to work at some low-paying warehouse.’
It was always the same. She accused me of lacking ambition, and I waited for her to stop talking. I never said much because there was nothing to say. I was planning on going to a university in the north side, was quitting PPS and moving at the end of summer. She knew all of this. We made the plans together, which, to me, implied something. We’d be together on the north side, going to the same school and living together. I was going to study English (probably), and she would major in whatever it was she wanted to study. I would work a better job than PPS, someplace with fluorescent lights and bad coffee and passive-aggressive conversation. My degree would net me that tiny piece of the American dream. Somewhere, someday not so far off, there was a cubicle with my name on it.”
The book is structured into three parts, giving ample time to set the scenes and Vincent’s particulars and mindset around each job. In Part 1, PPS 1993, The Southwest Suburbs of Chicago, he is a mail handler fresh out of high school. It is a job he despises but can’t seem to shake, like that over-serious girlfriend who may fall into the same category. Francone’s details are spot-on and unforgettable, such as the loser with the mullet haircut, “bad boy” sleeveless shirts, and the “Joey Buttafucco pants” (can’t you just see him?). And then there are all of the nicknames that sentence the characters to live up to their labels: Billbo, Billben, the Lifers.
The author copes with his homelessness in creative ways: keeping cool in brutal Chicago summers by staying up all night, sleeping in theaters and shopping without buying; staying in empty beds when roommates go out of town for a week or two; couch-surfing; bumming cigarettes, and while he is a loner at heart, he even occasionally made friends.
Part 2, Aspidistra 1995-1997, The North Side of Chicago is the richest, most engaging, and lengthiest section of the book. It’s a sort of High Fidelity cast of characters set in a decrepit, rat-infested bookstore where it’s always “beer-thirty.” This is the best job of this misanthrope’s life, where he is surrounded by great literature, and everyone is authentic even in their total dysfunction. There are truly some hilarious scenes, such as the boss ordering Vince to buy “non-phallic pretzels,” and the thievery Vince is tricked into committing for the boss, breaking into their other book store location where they’d stopped paying the rent (“We’re liberating our property,” they explained later).
Part 3, Adjunct 2011, The Entire Chicagoland Area may be the most painfully real for anyone who’s been an adjunct instructor in community college. By now, the author has disciplined himself enough to acquire a (formal) education and makes enough to survive when cobbling several part-time teaching jobs together with a gig as an office administrator at the always-battling partners of Fraud & Weasel, LLC, a law firm where he secretly grades his papers and plans classes. It’s a battle of apathy between the disinterested “casualties” of the public school system and a teacher with no reason to care. He gives bad grades and is known as “Prof F.” He races from campus to campus across town to teach classes to the combative, sleeping, and bored casualties, while juggling the paper trails of the lawyers’ crimes and, like Prometheus, hanging in a continual state of torment as everyone’s scapegoat.
When he runs into an old friend from the bookstore days, he is asked about life as a professor. Francone lays it on the line with the hard truth any adjunct I know might say:
“I can’t say, because I’m not a professor. I’m an instructor, which is what they call us adjuncts who don’t have our doctorate degrees and who work for peanuts. But I can tell you this: teaching is split between the people who work at posh schools and teach rich kids and smart kids with scholarships and the idiots like me who work for bargain basement community colleges. The hours suck. The workload is unrealistic. The pay absolutely sucks. The students hate you. The administrators doubt you. The schools don’t support you. If I was a full timer I’d have some form of professional development, but no one is interested in offering these programs to part timers, which is fucked up because we need them just as much as the full time jerks. The schools basically let us loose on their students without any training.”
It goes on and on, too much truth, but I can’t continue here or I’ll break out crying from my own PTSD, flashing back to when I dared to give failing grades to terrible students and was reprimanded for it because the school wanted that student loan money. But I digress…
I won’t spoil the ending of Like a Dog, save to say that Vincent Francone finally evolves into a man who can pay for his groceries and keep a roof over his head, and we are not sure whether to cheer or cry at the end. One thing is for certain though, and that is that his dream of becoming a writer did come true, because Like a Dog is a fine memoir.
“I am not one who has ever thought in terms of a career,” he tells the reader on page 61. “Careers are for people with ambition. This is not to say that I am a bad worker or that I lack motivation, but I have never considered any task to be my calling. Quite simple: all work is work. Calling a job a career makes it no more palatable.” And a little further down he gets to the point: “We go to school so that we can become something, but that something is always defined by our careers. This seems wrong.”
Ah, but the reader is wiser and, from holding the book with his name on it, knows the truth: that like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Vince was always who he intended to become. Or was he? Like a Dog is the coming-of-age story of this young antagonist who does have ambition: he dreams to be a writer, yet he is beaten down by the system while clinging to that dream. Stripped down to its core, no matter what the job, Francone’s work is sheer survival. Sometimes, you wonder why he bothers.
But don’t think it’s all a downer—far from it. Francone’s language is always smart but never pretentious, and gritty and real without gimmickry. Like a Dog is a classically urban twenty-something tale in the way that Vincent drinks too much, smokes too much, carries too much around the middle and flees the ever-present shadow of his family looming in the Chicago suburbs, inviting him to holiday dinners. But he also doesn’t touch drugs, and he’s an auto-didactic who, in earlier years, couldn’t keep it together for college but was better-read than all of his instructors put together.
The mood of the book, and the charm of Francone’s story-telling is summed up in a conversation Vincent has with his less-than-enchanting girlfriend Sophie on page 24:
“At some point during the date, Sophie would occasionally decide it was ‘time to talk.’
‘What now?’
‘I just wonder what it is you plan on doing.’
‘About what?’
‘Your life. That’s what. It’s like you have no plans other than to work at some low-paying warehouse.’
It was always the same. She accused me of lacking ambition, and I waited for her to stop talking. I never said much because there was nothing to say. I was planning on going to a university in the north side, was quitting PPS and moving at the end of summer. She knew all of this. We made the plans together, which, to me, implied something. We’d be together on the north side, going to the same school and living together. I was going to study English (probably), and she would major in whatever it was she wanted to study. I would work a better job than PPS, someplace with fluorescent lights and bad coffee and passive-aggressive conversation. My degree would net me that tiny piece of the American dream. Somewhere, someday not so far off, there was a cubicle with my name on it.”
The book is structured into three parts, giving ample time to set the scenes and Vincent’s particulars and mindset around each job. In Part 1, PPS 1993, The Southwest Suburbs of Chicago, he is a mail handler fresh out of high school. It is a job he despises but can’t seem to shake, like that over-serious girlfriend who may fall into the same category. Francone’s details are spot-on and unforgettable, such as the loser with the mullet haircut, “bad boy” sleeveless shirts, and the “Joey Buttafucco pants” (can’t you just see him?). And then there are all of the nicknames that sentence the characters to live up to their labels: Billbo, Billben, the Lifers.
The author copes with his homelessness in creative ways: keeping cool in brutal Chicago summers by staying up all night, sleeping in theaters and shopping without buying; staying in empty beds when roommates go out of town for a week or two; couch-surfing; bumming cigarettes, and while he is a loner at heart, he even occasionally made friends.
Part 2, Aspidistra 1995-1997, The North Side of Chicago is the richest, most engaging, and lengthiest section of the book. It’s a sort of High Fidelity cast of characters set in a decrepit, rat-infested bookstore where it’s always “beer-thirty.” This is the best job of this misanthrope’s life, where he is surrounded by great literature, and everyone is authentic even in their total dysfunction. There are truly some hilarious scenes, such as the boss ordering Vince to buy “non-phallic pretzels,” and the thievery Vince is tricked into committing for the boss, breaking into their other book store location where they’d stopped paying the rent (“We’re liberating our property,” they explained later).
Part 3, Adjunct 2011, The Entire Chicagoland Area may be the most painfully real for anyone who’s been an adjunct instructor in community college. By now, the author has disciplined himself enough to acquire a (formal) education and makes enough to survive when cobbling several part-time teaching jobs together with a gig as an office administrator at the always-battling partners of Fraud & Weasel, LLC, a law firm where he secretly grades his papers and plans classes. It’s a battle of apathy between the disinterested “casualties” of the public school system and a teacher with no reason to care. He gives bad grades and is known as “Prof F.” He races from campus to campus across town to teach classes to the combative, sleeping, and bored casualties, while juggling the paper trails of the lawyers’ crimes and, like Prometheus, hanging in a continual state of torment as everyone’s scapegoat.
When he runs into an old friend from the bookstore days, he is asked about life as a professor. Francone lays it on the line with the hard truth any adjunct I know might say:
“I can’t say, because I’m not a professor. I’m an instructor, which is what they call us adjuncts who don’t have our doctorate degrees and who work for peanuts. But I can tell you this: teaching is split between the people who work at posh schools and teach rich kids and smart kids with scholarships and the idiots like me who work for bargain basement community colleges. The hours suck. The workload is unrealistic. The pay absolutely sucks. The students hate you. The administrators doubt you. The schools don’t support you. If I was a full timer I’d have some form of professional development, but no one is interested in offering these programs to part timers, which is fucked up because we need them just as much as the full time jerks. The schools basically let us loose on their students without any training.”
It goes on and on, too much truth, but I can’t continue here or I’ll break out crying from my own PTSD, flashing back to when I dared to give failing grades to terrible students and was reprimanded for it because the school wanted that student loan money. But I digress…
I won’t spoil the ending of Like a Dog, save to say that Vincent Francone finally evolves into a man who can pay for his groceries and keep a roof over his head, and we are not sure whether to cheer or cry at the end. One thing is for certain though, and that is that his dream of becoming a writer did come true, because Like a Dog is a fine memoir.
January 14, 2019
This gem of a book was a lot of fun to read. Vincent Francone takes us along on his journey through young adulthood with all the reality of someone taking an honest look at life. His insights are not exclusive to his generation but are only seen when someone is honest and open enough to acknowledge them. More than a coming-of-age memoir, Like a Dog made me laugh out loud and also proved what a great writer he is. Highly recommended reading!
November 30, 2025
Too much effort and not enough talent. The book is a lame dog.
February 12, 2016
Achingly funny account of a young man's quest to find his place in the adult world. From sorting mail with a band of misfits to selling used books just for the love of it to being the glue that holds together a highly dysfunctional law office (where the two partners not only no longer even speak to each other, but one is suing the other), Francone tries on a lot of different costumes before finding out that...well, I don't want to spoil it for you. But he writes about it in an extremely entertaining way.
December 28, 2021
I was expecting this book to focus more on the trials and tribulations of the author’s worklife and while the details of those aspects of his life were expertly captured and described, they served as more of a backdrop to a very funny (cynically so) description of a young man trying to find his way in the world (well, in his part of the world, which is Chicago and surrounding areas) and make sense of work, relationships, and himself. Really enjoyed every page of this!
May 3, 2016
I more clearly understand the slacker label given to my generation. I get it, we all need time to figure out our calling, and some take longer than others. The disdain for others, especially students, was a lot to stomach. While much shorter than Franzen, this memoir reminded me of his work in that no one is very likable.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews