Working

by Studs Terkel

  We have a computer. We call it Audex. It has taken the detail drudgery out of accounting. I use things that come out of the computer in my everyday work. An accountant will prepare things for keypunching. A girl will keypunch and it will go into the monster. That’s what we call it. (Laughs.) You still have to audit what comes out of the computer. I work with pencils. We all do. I think that’s ’cause we make so many mistakes. (Laughs.)

  You’re an auditor. The term scares people. They believe you’re there to see if they’re stealing nickels and dimes out of petty cash. We’re not concerned with that. But people have that image of us. They think we’re there to spy on them. What we’re really doing is making sure things are reported correctly. I don’t care if somebody’s stealing money as long as he reports it. (Laughs.)

  People look at you with fear and suspicion. The girl who does accounts receivable never saw an auditor before. The comptroller knows why you’re there and he’ll cooperate. But it’s the guy down the line who is not sure and worries. You ask him a lot of questions. What does he do? How does he do it? Are you after his job? Are you trying to get him fired? He’s not very friendly.

  We’re supposed to be independent. We’re supposed to certify their books are correct. We’ll certify this to the Securities Exchange Commission, to the stockholders, to the banks. They’ll all use our financial statements. But if we slight the company—if I find something that’s going to take away five hundred thousand dollars of income this year—they may not hire us back next year.

  I’m not involved in keeping clients or getting them. That’s the responsibility of the manager or the partner. I’m almost at the bottom of the heap. I’m the top class of assistant. There are five levels. I’m a staff assistant. Above me is senior. Senior’s in charge of the job, out in the field with the client. The next level is manager. He has over-all responsibility for the client. He’s in charge of billing. The next step is partner. That’s tops. He has an interest in the company. Our owners are called partners. They have final responsibility. The partner decides whether this five hundred thousand dollars is going to go or stay on the books.

  There are gray areas. Say I saw that five hundred thousand dollars as a bad debt. The client may say, “Oh, the guy’s good for it. He’s going to pay.” You say, “He hasn’t paid you anything for the past six months. He declared bankruptcy yesterday. How can you say he’s gonna pay?” Your client says, “He’s reorganizing and he gonna get the money.” You’ve got two ways of looking at this. The guy’s able to pay or he’s not. Somebody’s gotta make a decision. Are we gonna allow you to show this receivable or are we gonna make you write it off? We usually compromise. We try to work out something in-between. The company knows more about it than we do, right? But we do have to issue an independent report. Anyway, I’m not a partner who makes those decisions. (Laughs.)

  I think I’ll leave before I get there. Many people in our firm don’t plan on sticking around. The pressure. The constant rush to get things done. Since I’ve been here, two people have had nervous breakdowns. I have three bosses on any job, but I don’t know who’s my boss next week. I might be working for somebody else.

  Our firm has a philosophy of progress, up or out. I started three years ago. If that second year I didn’t move from SA–3, staff assistant, to SA–4, I’d be out. Last June I was SA–4. If I hadn’t moved to SA–5, I’d be out. Next year if I don’t move to senior, I’ll be out. When I make senior I’ll be Senior-4. The following year, Senior–2. Then Senior–3, Then manager—or out. By the time I’m thirty-four or so, I’m a partner or I’m out.

  When a partner reaches fifty-five he no longer has direct client responsibility. He doesn’t move out, because he’s now part owner of the company. He’s in an advisory capacity. They’re not retired. They’re just—just doing research. I’m not saying this is good or bad. This is just how it is.

  It’s a very young field. You have a lot of them at the bottom to do the footwork. Then it pyramids and you don’t need so many up there. Most of the people they get are just out of college. I can’t label them—the range is broad—but I’d guess most of them are conservative. Politics is hardly discussed.

  Fifteen years ago, public accountants wore white shirts. You had to wear a hat, so you could convey a conservative image. When I was in college the big joke was: If you’re going to work for a public accounting firm, make sure you buy a good supply of white shirts and a hat. They’ve gotten away from that since. We have guys with long hair. But they do catch more static than somebody in another business. And now we have women. There are several female assistants and seniors. There’s one woman manager. We have no female partners.

  If you don’t advance, they’ll help you find another job. They’re very nice about it. They’ll fire you, but they just don’t throw you out in the street. (Laughs.) They’ll try to find you a job with one of our clients. There’s a theory behind it. Say I leave to go to XYZ Manfacturing Company. In fifteen years, I’m comptroller and I need an audit. Who am I gonna go to? Although their philosophy is up or out, they treat their employees very well.

  Is my job important? It’s a question I ask myself. It’s important to people who use financial statements, who buy stocks. It’s important to banks. (Pause.) I’m not out combatting pollution or anything like that. Whether it’s important to society . . . (A long pause.) No, not too important. It’s necessary in this economy, based on big business. I don’t think most of the others at the firm share my views. (Laughs.)

  I have a couple friends there. We get together and talk once in a while. At first you’re afraid to say anything ’cause you think the guy really loves it. You don’t want to say, “I hate it.” But then you hear the guy say, “Boy! If it weren’t for the money I’d quit right now.”

  I’d like to go back to college and get a master’s or Ph.D. and become a college teacher. The only problem is I don’t think I have the smarts for it. When I was in high school I thought I’d be an engineer. So I took math, chemistry, physics, and got my D’s. I thought of being a history major. Then I said, “What will I do with a degree in history?” I thought of poli sci. I thought most about going into law. I still think about that. I chose accounting for a very poor reason. I eliminated everything else. Even after I passed my test as a CPA I was saying all along, “I don’t want to be an accountant.” (Laughs.) I’m young enough. After June I can look around. As for salary, I’m well ahead of my contemporaries. I’m well ahead of those in teaching and slightly ahead of those in engineering. But that isn’t it . . .

  When people ask what I do, I tell them I’m an accountant. It sounds better than auditor, doesn’t it? (Laughs.) But it’s not a very exciting business. What can you say about figures? (Laughs.) You tell people you’re an accountant—(his voice deliberately assumes a dull monotone) “Oh, that’s nice.” They don’t know quite what to say. (Laughs.) What can you say? I could say, “Wow! I saw this company yesterday and their balance sheet, wow!” (Laughs.) Maybe I look at it wrong. (Slowly, emphasizing each word) There just isn’t much to talk about.

  FOOTWORK

  JACK SPIEGEL

  He is an organizer for the United Shoe Workers of America.

  “About sixty percent in the industry are women. In some shops it goes as high as seventy percent. A great many are Spanish-speaking and blacks. It’s low paying work. The average wage in the shoe industry today is a little over a hundred dollars a week. There are all kinds of work stoppages. Even conservative workers are militant in the shops.

  “Traditionally the shoe industry has been on piecework. We discourage it and, in many cases, struggle with our own people. They can pick up twenty-five, thirty percent over their time week. But we don’t accept the philosophy that you’ve got to work till you drop.

  “Small shops are going out of business because they can’t compete with the giants. There’s been a lot of mergers in the shoe industry. Importation has cut into a third of the shoes being sold in our country. Shoes are brou
ght in from Spain, Japan, Italy . . . The average wage in this country is $2.60. In Italy it is $1.10.

  “The same manufacturers who exploit here open up factories there, bring the shoes in here, finish ’em in some places, and put a ”Made in America” label on them. The consumer thinks he’s getting a break. They get it a little cheaper, but the quality and workmanship may not be as good.

  “Up to about twelve years ago, we had about a quarter of a million workers. There are now less than 170,000. In the next ten, fifteen years it may diminish to less than fifty thousand. What happened to watchmaking may happen to us. It’s happened to textiles, too, where half the workers have lost their jobs in the past twenty years.

  “If some measures aren’t taken by the government to tax those who send money out and establish those factories in other countries, and take jobs away from people here, it will be good-bye to the American shoe industry. Those in their sixties will retire. Those who are still able to work will find it more difficult.”

  ALICE WASHINGTON

  She works in the warehouse of the Florsheim Shoe Company. She is an order filler. “When I first started it was hard, but after nine years you get used to it.” She is secretary-treasurer of the union local. “I have five children at home.”

  You go to different aisles or bins, you just pull out shoes according to your order. You have your AS orders43 and your regular orders. You have rushes. You’d get an order in a folder for about two hundred to seven hundred pair of shoes. Oh, just all different types of orders.

  I am walking all day long. Usually we work two hours overtime, which is until six ’. We work five hours on Saturday. All day long I’m on my feet. I’ve thought about it seriously and I’m gonna sit down and try to figure out just exactly how many miles I do walk within a week. To me, it’s about fifty miles a day. (Laughs.)

  I feel the exercise is good for me but it hasn’t done anything for me. (Laughs.) After listening to doctors and different books that you read, they say walking is very healthy for you. Yeah? Do I look like I lost weight? That’s what’s disgusting. (Laughs.)

  It’s not only the walking. It’s the reaching, the bending. I mean, you get a great amount of exercise in all areas. Say, for instance, you wanted 20292. I know it’s in Zone Three or Four. Say your size is 8½ B. Maybe 8½ B is extremely high. I have to reach up and get a ladder. Or maybe it’s very low. I have to bend down and bring the shoe out.

  You push around a rack all day. It’s a big steel rack, which normally holds 208 pairs of shoes. You complete your rack. You count your shoes. You make out your ticket. Some orders are very hard to fill, calling for odd sizes. I had two orders today that gave me a complete headache. If you put your mind to it and try to get those orders out, it’s nerve-racking. Some days I’m not as tired as I should be. There are other times when I get absolutely tired.

  Right now I’m having a lot of trouble with my feet. Cement is bad on your feet anyway. The whole building is cement floor. I wear crepe-soled shoes. You can’t wear anything too flat. You have to have something slightly elevated to keep your heel up off the floor. You have a lot of young girls coming in and they say, “Don’t you ever complain about your feet? My feet are killing me.” We have complained, yes. The management would say, “Get yourself the right-type shoe.”

  Most of the young girls are on the bonus system—piecework. You’re out there trying to make extra money besides the average rate. That’s a dull, steady pace all day long. Entirely too much. The other day we had a big rouse-up. Who’s getting the best orders, who’s not? Naturally they want the big orders where they can make their bonus money at the end of the month. Me myself, I’ll never go for it. I know in the long run I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it. I’m just there to do a day’s work.

  I’ve often thought about a sit-down job, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m used to this. I have worked in checking. You check for mistakes after the picker has picked the shoes. You sat down all day long. Truthfully, I prefer walking. The sitting down seemed to bother my back.

  She started working at seventeen as a chambermaid in a South Carolina motel. At eighteen she married. She worked in New York for three years, “at a business school. Part-time, six to ten. I was doing switchboard and comptometry. We had got in this bookkeeping machine. I worked the IBM, the comptometer, and the switchboard. I had time to get myself with it.

  “When I came to Chicago I was looking for the type of office work I had been doing in New York. The places where I was applying, they wanted speed—so they said. I tried not to feel my color had anything to do with it. I went to a place downtown two, three times. I knew that switchboard as well as anybody. I watched her train a girl and I could hardly keep my hands out from showing the girl how to do it, by me knowing it so well. When I took the test for the job, the woman who was training me was so nasty, for no reason. She got me so upset, so nervous. I had to look at her two or three times. I said, ‘No, I won’t lose my temper. I’m trying to get a job.’ After the examination was over, she said, ‘If we have an opening we’ll let you know.’ (Laughs.) It couldn’t be nothin’ but by color. (Laughs.) You hate to feel that, but . . . I couldn’t find anything. I have these children to support, so I was hired at the warehouse and have been here ever since.”

  I used to work overtime almost every day, but after my oldest son went off to college, I stopped. I could sort of rely on him to take care of the smaller kids. I take the bus home or, if I’m lucky, I catch a ride with some of the fellas that travel the same route. Every evening I fix dinner and see about the homework and that they’ve done things I told them to do before I leave in the morning. On Wednesday, I wash. We have a laundry room. I walk back and forth, washing, and I’m cooking all the time. Do you realize the walking that is done? On Wednesday evenings, I don’t get to bed until about eleven ’. Some mornings I’m so tired. (Laughs.) But once I get up and wash my face and get stirred around, I’m in pretty good shape.

  If you stop and daydream, you’re losing a lot of time picking up your shoes. When you hit that floor in the morning you say, “Well, I’m gonna get started with it and I’m gonna get through with it.” If you constantly work and don’t pass off the time, messin’ around, the time goes by. You turn around and look at your watch, Oh my goodness, it’s break time—or it’s lunch time or it’s time to go home.

  During lunch we kid around with each other. We like to have a little fun. That takes the drudgery out of knowing you gotta hit the floor again. And to keep you from feeling tired. We discuss different things that we hear on the news, just things in general. Our main conversation is discussing the kids. If my child does something funny or bad, I tell it. If my coworkers’ children do something, they tell it.

  We get along very well with the office workers. Every time I go in, I always give them a good morning and I always try to have something funny to say. I don’t feel less than they do. In fact, we have a young lady, she’s in the office and she wants to come out on the floor because she’s not making enough money. You don’t make as much in the office as you would working in a factory.

  For all that walking, I should be making at least five dollars an hour. I’m able to save very little, and I do mean very little. You have to pay rent, lights, and telephone bill. You have to clothe your children, you have to feed them. It’s very hard. If you get a nickel or two, something comes up and you have to spend it. My son just got off to college. Every time he picks up the telephone, this has got to be done, that has to be done . . . it’s rough.

  How long will I be able to hold up at this? That is my main worry. That’s the reason I never bothered about the bonus. I knew as I became older I wouldn’t be able to continue. So I just worked along the pace that I was working. When I punch that clock in the morning I have a certain amount of work to get out because I’m being paid a day’s work. But to rip and run like these younger children . . . You have your nineteen-, twenty-year-olds —there’s two of us that are in age—these younge
r ones, they go partying and everything else and—boom!—right back to work the next morning. Me? I can’t do that.

  Oh, sometimes I become very disgusted with myself and I say to myself, “Do I always have to walk like this?” Maybe I should strike out and do something else before I get too old. Age is a great barrier after you wait nine years and try to strike out and do something else. I say, “I can’t give up now. I have children in school.” So . . . (a heavy sigh) it runs through my mind, I become very discouraged sometimes.

  (Her face is transformed; she glows.) I would like to work with children, small children. I have thought several times of trying to set up a nursery, even if I didn’t start with but one or two children. That’s what I’d really like. I have thought about it very seriously. About two, three years ago, I mentioned it to some of the girls on the job. It’s not what you would charge a person, it’s just the idea of helping. This mother had to get out there. Believe me, it’s many of us that have to get out here. I mean have to get out and come a great distance and—have you ever gotten on a bus and see a mother with arms swinging and two, three children holding on to each hand, and she’s trying to get to that job? I’d like to work with children. That has been my real hopes in life.

  JOHN FULLER

  He has been a mail carrier since 1964, though he’s worked in the post office for twenty-six years. “Back in ‘47 I was a clerk at the finance window. I had a break in the service and came back as a truckdriver. I was a little confined. Bein’ a carrier gives me more street time where I’m meeting more of the public.” He is forty-eight years old.