Working

by Studs Terkel

  They made a crack to my children in school. My kids would just love to see me do something else. I tell ‘em, “Honey, this is a good job. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re not stealin’ the money. You have everything you need.”

  I don’t like to have my salary compared to anybody else’s. I don’t like to hear that we’re makin’ more than a schoolteacher. I earn my money just as well as they do. A teacher should get more money, but don’t take it away from me.

  ROY SCHMIDT

  They call us truck loaders, that’s what the union did. We’re just laborers, that’s all we are. What the devil, there’s no glamour to it. Just bouncin’ heavy cans around all day. I’m givin’ the city a fair day’s work. I don’t want to lean on anyone else. Regardless if I was working here or elsewhere, I put in my day. We’re the ones that pick up the cans, dump ’em in the hopper, and do the manual end of the job. There’s nothing complex about it.

  He is fifty-eight. His fellow crew members are fifty and sixty-nine. For the past seven years he has worked for the Sanitation Department. “I worked at a freight dock for two years. That was night work. It was punching me out. At the end of the week I didn’t know one day from another. I looked for a day job and landed this.”

  In this particular neighborhood, the kids are a little snotty. They’re let run a little too loose. They’re not held down the way they should. It’s getting a little wild around here. I live in the neighborhood and you have to put up with it. They’ll yell while you’re riding from one alley to another, “Garbage picker!” The little ones usually give you a highball, seem to enjoy it, and you wave back at ’em. When they get a little bigger, they’re liable to call you most anything on the truck. (Laughs.) They’re just too stupid to realize the necessity of the job.

  I’ve been outside for seven years and I feel more free. I don’t take the job home with me. When I worked in the office, my wife would say, “What was the matter with you last night? You laid there and your fingers were drumming the mattress.” That’s when I worked in the office. The bookkeeping and everything else, it was starting to play on my nerves. Yeah, I prefer laboring to bookkeeping. For one thing, a bookkeeping job doesn’t pay anything. I was the lowest paid man there.

  Physically, I was able to do more around the house. Now I’m too tired to pitch into anything heavy. I’ll mow the lawn and I’ll go upstairs and maybe catch a TV program or two, and I’ll hit the hay. In the winter months, it’s so much worse. After being outside all day and walkin’ into a warm house, I can cork off in a minute. (Laughs.) The driver has some protection, he has the cab of the truck. We’re out in the cold.

  You get it in the shoulders and the arms. You have an ache here and an ache there. Approximately four years ago, I put my back into spasms. The city took care of it, put me in a hospital for a week. That one year, it happened twice to me—because of continual lifting. The way one doctor explained it to me, I may be goin’ thirty days and it’s already started. It’s just on the last day, whenever it’s gonna hit, it just turns you upside down. You can’t walk, you can’t move, you can’t get up.

  I wear a belt, sort of a girdle. You can buy them in any orthopedic place. This is primarily to hold me in. This one doctor says I’m fairly long-legged and I’m overlifting. The men I work with are average height. I’m six three, I was six four when I went in the army but I think I’ve come down a little bit. It’s my own fault. I probably make it harder on myself with my way of lifting. I’ve been fairly well protected during the past four years. I haven’t had any days off because of it. I wouldn’t want to face it again, I’ll tell you that.

  It’s a fifty-gallon drum you lift. I’d say anywhere from eighty pounds to several hundred pounds, depending on what they’re loaded with. We lift maybe close to two hundred cans a day. I never attempted to count them. They surprise you every once in a while. They’ll load it with something very heavy, like plaster. (Laughs.)

  I always said you can read in a garbage can how a person lives. We have this Mexican and Puerto Rican movement in this area. You find a lot of rice and a good many TV dinners. They don’t seem to care about cooking too much. I can’t say that every family is like that. I never lived with ’em.

  I wear an apron over this. By the time you get two or three days in these clothes they’re ready for the washer. Working behind the truck, you never know what might shoot out from behind there—liquid or glass or plastic. There is no safety features on the truck. When these blades in the hopper catch it and bring it forward, it spurts out like a bullet. Two years ago, I was struck in the face with a piece of wood. Cut the flesh above the eye and broke my glasses. When I got to the doctor, he put a stitch in it. I had the prettiest shiner you ever seen. (Laughs.) It can be dangerous. You never know what people throw out. I’ve seen acid thrown out.

  They tell you stay away from the rear of the truck when the blade’s in motion, but if you did that throughout a day, you’d lose too much time. By the time the blade’s goin’, you’re getting the next can ready to dump.

  You don’t talk much. You might just mention something fell out of the can or a word or two. Maybe we’ll pull in an alley and they’ll take five minutes for a cigarette break. We might chew the fat about various things —current events, who murdered who (laughs), sensational stories. Maybe one of the fellas read an article about something that happened over in Europe. Oh, once in a while, talk about the war. It has never been a heated discussion with me.

  I’m pretty well exhausted by the time I get through in the day. I’ve complained at times when the work was getting a little too heavy. My wife says, “Well, get something else.” Where the devil is a man my age gonna get something else? You just don’t walk from job to job.

  She says I should go to sixty-two if I can. I have some Social Security comin’. The pension from the city won’t amount to anything. I don’t have that much service. Another four years, I’ll have only eleven years, and that won’t build up a city pension for me by any means.

  It’ll be just day to day. Same thing as bowling. You bowl each frame, that’s right. If you look ahead, you know what you’re getting into. So why aggravate yourself? You know what we call bad stops. A mess to clean up in a certain alley. Why look ahead to it? The devil. As long as my health holds out, I want to work.

  I have a daughter in college. If she goes through to June, she’ll have her master’s degree. She’s in medicine. For her, it’ll be either teaching or research. As she teaches, she can work for her doctorate. She’s so far ahead of me, I couldn’t . . .

  I don’t look down on my job in any way. I couldn’t say I despise myself for doing it. I feel better at it than I did at the office. I’m more free. And, yeah—it’s meaningful to society. (Laughs.)

  I was told a story one time by a doctor. Years ago, in France, they had a setup where these princes and lords and God knows what they had floating around. If you didn’t stand in favor with the king, they’d give you the lowest job, of cleaning the streets of Paris—which must have been a mess in those days. One lord goofed up somewhere along the line, so they put him in charge of it. And he did such a wonderful job that he was commended for it. The worst job in the French kingdom and he was patted on the back for what he did. That was the first story I ever heard about garbage where it really meant something.

  POSTSCRIPT: Several months after the conversation he sent me a note: “Nick and I are still on the job, but to me the alleys are getting larger and the cans larger. Getting old.”

  LOUIS HAYWARD

  He is a washroom attendant at the Palmer House. It is one of the older, more highly regarded hotels in Chicago. He has been at this for fifteen years. For most of his working life he had been a Pullman porter. The decline in passenger train travel put an end to that. He is nearing sixty-two. “This work is light and easy. That’s why I took it. I had a stroke. I might qualify for something. better, but I feel I’m too old now.”

  It’s an automatic thing, waiting on people. I
t doesn’t require any thought. It’s almost a reflex action. I set my toilet articles up, towels—and I’m ready. We have all the things that men normally would have in their cabinets at home: creams, face lotions, mouth washes, hair preparations. I don’t do porter work, clean up. That’s all done by the hotel. I work for a concession.

  They come in. They wash their hands after using the service—you hope. (A soft chuckle.) I go through the old brush routine, stand back, expecting a tip. A quarter is what you expect when you hand the guy a towel and a couple of licks of the broom. Okay. You don’t always get it. For service over and beyond the call of duty, you expect more. That’s when he wants Vitalis on his hair, Aqua Velva on his face, and wants Murine for his eyes. We render that too, sometimes.

  One thing that reduced our intake, that’s when they stopped using the Liberty halves. I’m not talking about the Kennedy halves, they’re not too much in circulation. They’d throw you a half. He don’t have it in his pocket any more. Now he throws you a quarter. You’d be surprised the difference it makes. A big tip is the only thing that is uppermost in any attendant’s mind, because that’s what you’re there for. You’re, there to sell service and you only have about a minute and a half to impress the person. The only thing you can do is be alert, to let the man know that you’re aware of him. That’s the way he judges you.

  It builds his ego up a little bit. By the same token, he can be deflated by the right person. An attendant or a captain in a dining room or a doorman—I don’t care who you are, if you’re President of the United States or United States Steel, if you walk into any washroom, you like to be recognized. If you’re with a client—“Hello, Mr. Jones”—that impresses the client. This guy really gets around. The washroom attendant knows him. I’m building him up. If he’s been in before and is rude in one way or another, I can always be busy doing something else.

  I can just separate the wheat from the chaff. I know live ones from almost lookin’ at them from so-called deadheads. There’s a bit of snob in me anyway. If you don’t appeal to me the way I think you should, I’m not going to slight you, but there could be just a little difference in the attention you get.

  Oh yes, there’s been a change in fifteen years. Not in the size of the tip. That’s pretty well standardized, a quarter. The clientele are different. I always felt that a good servant is a little snobbish. I don’t enjoy waiting on my peers. I feel that if I’m gonna occupy a position that’s menial, let it be to someone perhaps a cut above me. It’s just a personal feeling. I’m not gonna let him feel that—the salesman or the person off the street. Now our customers are not too liberal. Most people who come to conventions today don’t have big expense accounts any more. Everybody feels it all down the line.

  It’s open now to the public. Young black and white suddenly become aware of this washroom. It’s just off the street. They’re in here like flies. A lot of this stuff is new to them: “What is this, a barber shop?” It’s free. Sometimes you think you’re down in the subway. It’s a parade, in and out. Some of ’em are real bad boys that are downtown. When they come in, you don’t know if it’s a rip-off or what it is. It has happened. Seven, eight years ago, it was not heard of. It never crossed anybody’s mind.

  They just don’t know. I’m not talking about young people. Some of the older people, they come from downstate, a little town . . . One other thing has changed in the past few years, the life style, in dressin’. Sometimes you make a mistake. You figure the wrong guy is a bum, and he’s very affluent.

  It has its ups and downs. You meet a few celebrities. It’s always to your best advantage to recognize them. We got a lot of bigwigs from city hall for lunch. The mayor comes quite often. Judges . . .

  Most of the time I’m sitting down here reading, a paper or a book. I got a locker full of one thing or another. The day goes. I have a shine man in the back. At least you have someone to talk to. That takes a little of your monotony off it. Deadly sometimes.

  I’m not particularly proud of what I’m doing. The shine man and I discuss it quite freely. In my own habitat I don’t go around saying I’m a washroom attendant at the Palmer House. Outside of my immediate family, very few people know what I do. They do know I work at the Palmer House and let that suffice. You say Palmer House, they automatically assume you’re a waiter.

  This man shining shoes, he’s had several offers—he’s a very good bootblack—where he could make more money. But he wouldn’t take ’em because the jobs were too open. He didn’t want to be seen shining shoes. To quote him, “Too many pretty girls pass by.” (Laughs.)

  No, I’m not proud of this work. I can’t do anything heavy. It would be hard to do anything else, so I’m stuck. I’ve become inured to it now. It doesn’t affect me one way or the other. Several years ago (pause)—I couldn’t begin to tell you how menial the job was. I was frustrated with myself—for being put in that position. The years piled up and now it doesn’t even occur to me, doesn’t cross my mind. I was placed in a very unusual position. It’s very hard for me to realize it even now. It took a little while, but it don’t take too long, really. Especially when you see other people doing it too. That’s one thing that sped it along. If it were myself alone—but I see others doin’ it. So it can’t be so bad.

  “I was a Pullman porter for God knows how many years. That’s why I got into this so easily. When I was first employed, the porter status was very low. Everybody called him George. We got together and got a placard printed with our name on it and posted it on each end of the car: Car served by Louis M. Hayward. (Chuckles softly.) So we could politely refer everybody to this. When I first went on the road, the porter was the first accused of anything: wallet missing—the porter got it. (Dry chuckle.) A lot of them went on pensions. A pretty good pension—from a black man’s standard. A white man might not think it’s so hot. Others have jobs in banks—as messengers.”

  People are a lot more sophisticated today. It’s so easy to say, “Is the shoe shine boy here?” Very few of ‘em use that expression these days. They make very sure they ask for the shine man. This fellow I work with—I wouldn’t call him militant, but he’s perhaps a little more forward than I am—he wouldn’t respond if you called him boy. He’d promptly tell ’em; “We don’t have any shoe shine boy here. We only have men shining shoes.”

  The man I hand the towel to is perfectly aware of my presence. Sometimes he wants it to appear that he is unaware of you. You have to be aware of him whether he’s aware of you or not. A very common ploy is for two men to come in discussing a big business deal. I stand with the towels and they just walk right by, talking about thousands of dollars in transactions. I’m to assume they’re so occupied with what they’re doing that they don’t have time for me. They ignore me completely. They don’t bother to wash their hands. (Laughs.) I laugh at them inside. The joke’s on them as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes just for the hell of it, when they go back to the urinal, I’ll have the water running: “Towel, sir?” “No, I gotta hurry and get back to eat.” He’s just come from the toilet. He hasn’t bothered to wash his hands. (Chuckles.)

  Truthfully, I don’t carry my feeling of menial work quite that deeply that it hurts me. The only time I feel hurt is when I perform some extra service and don’t get what I thought I deserved. I’m completely hardened now. I just take it in stride.

  The whole thing is obsolete. It’s on its way out. This work isn’t necessary in the first place. It’s so superfluous. It was never necessary. (Laughs.) It’s just a hustle. Years ago, a black man at night spots and hotels would keep the place clean and whatever you could hustle there was yours. He did pretty good at it. Talked a little too much about how well he was doing. Well, people started to look into it. This could be an operation . . .

  The concessions took over?22

  (A long pause.)

  Uh—when did they start taking over?

  (Softly) That I don’t know. It happened in many cities. I’ve wondered about it myself. I—I don’t kn
ow.

  I heard the concession gets twenty-five cents from every attendant for every two towels handed out . . .

  (A long pause.) That’s what he told you?23

  Yeah.

  Well, that’s a . . . (Trails off.)

  Is that true?

  I—I don’t know. I don’t question his word, but . . . (A long pause.) I’ll make an application for Social Security in a couple of months. I’ll be sixty-two. I’m not gonna wait till sixty-five. I might not even be here then. I’ll take what I got comin’ and run. (A soft chuckle.)

  I got it all pretty well figured out. I’ll still work a little down here. That’ll give me something. To sit down and do nothing, I don’t look forward to that. There certainly is not gonna be that much money that I can afford to do it. (Laughs.) I’m not well off by any means. To say that I do not need much money now is not true. But I’m not gonna kill myself to get it. I could be a house man here, a waiter, but I can’t handle it now.

  “Years ago it was quite different than the way I’m spending my leisure time now. I spent a great deal of time up at the corner tavern with the boys. I don’t go out much at night any more. Nobody does that’s got his marbles. I read and watch television. If I want something to drink, I take it home with me. When I retire, I guess I’ll be doing more of this same thing.”