How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work

by Megan Hustad

  Of course, Carnegie might say. In the opening remarks of his janitor speech, he took a quick swipe at young women who thought all they had to do was show up and people would be impressed. But the surprising angle of Carnegie’s formulation is that the too-aggressive, happily volunteering-too-much-in-formation crowd would probably end up Bob Cratchits too. Sure, they had energy to spare in the beginning, but over time it would leach out of them because they were clearly somewhat oblivious, and the effects of making gaffe after gaffe would chip away at their confidence until there was none left. The best approach, business advisors concluded, wasn’t a happy medium between too hard and too soft, but something more precise. The best way to get a corporate overlord to rescue you from the talent pool was to master a very particular persona. So the question becomes: Besides being willing to sweep up; besides meticulous, thorough, and attentive to small responsibilities; what else? If we can’t be ourselves on the job, who should we be?

  Their suggestions were highly specific. The American Chesterfield recommended: “well-bred, without ceremony; easy, without negligence; steady and intrepid, with modesty; genteel, without affectation; insinuating, without meanness; cheerful, without being nosy; frank, without indiscretion, and secret, without mysteriousness; to know the proper time and place for whatever you say or do.” Which all sounds great but difficult to implement while standing next to the photocopier. Carnegie’s right-hand man Charles M. Schwab was more succinct. In a tract called Succeeding with What You Have, he wrote: “The man who attracts attention is the man who is thinking all the time, and expressing himself in little ways… It is not the man who tries to dazzle his employer by doing the theatrical, the spectacular.”

  Schwab also felt a solid contender wouldn’t strive for genius—he felt genius was entirely overrated. Carnegie seconded that; the only time he used the word genius is when he stated that any clerk who had “the genius of the future partner in him” would take over cleaning duties on days the janitor happened to be absent. Eugene Brewster, in Success Secrets, said genius was important but then defined genius downward as a “mastery of details,” and a habit of tending to “the little things,” much as Schwab advocated.

  The correct pose was not too terrifically intellectual, either. One of the first tenets of this business philosophy was that the law of diminishing returns pertained to intelligence; being smart was great, but after a certain point, smarter wasn’t going to get you much farther. Some business theorists even remarked that J. P. Morgan—another very rich man of the time—was relatively slow to make his millions because he was so well educated. (He’d gone to college in Germany.) James W. Alexander, author of 1856’s The Merchant’s Clerk Cheered and Counselled, had noticed that some young men had problems with work—they grew resentful, and would go to bars at night to drink themselves into oblivion—and he felt this had a lot to do with misplaced intellect. His solution? They needed to stop expecting their entry-level jobs to deliver intellectual excitement. There just wasn’t any to be had.7

  For Horace Greeley, speaking in 1867 to the graduating class of Packard’s Bryant & Stratton Business College, in New York, the correct pose boiled down to exhibiting “many-sidedness,” which he haltingly defined as being capable and adaptable, “Now, that is what we want,” he said. “Men who do one thing, it may be, today, but who are prepared to do something else tomorrow, if something else is needed and that which they are doing is not.”

  By which he meant, I believe, that the poser would never say, “But that’s not my job.” Nor would he say, “This is retarded,” while stomping away from the janitor’s closet, mumbling something to the effect that all those years and all that tuition money were clearly wasted. The clerk who did grunt work while at the same time making sure everyone within earshot understood that he was generally above this sort of thing, or capable of so much more, well, such a clerk was a snob, and snobs were also not OK by most employers’ standards.

  The ideal office clerk also kept his feelings largely to himself. Which meant that if he didn’t actually feel it in his bones, he pretended to be happy to be there. One of Carnegie’s early jobs had him stoking coal fires in a factory basement boiler room, so just working above ground, at a desk, with “newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine about” was once enough to make him smugly satisfied. (In his autobiography, Carnegie recalled walking into his first day of work at an actual office and thinking, “Paradise, yes, heaven.”) Now that he was the big boss, he was drawn to a similar cheerfulness in underlings. Upbeat was more polite, and more pleasant to be around.

  And that’s the sum total of what was wanted from you. It’s also a decent explanation for why stupid incidents that don’t seem to mean much at the time turn out to have an unexpected —and lasting—power. Lauren, for instance, was once informed by a senior colleague that she owed her promotion to apple juice. She thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. What happened is that an author—an older, fatter man—came to their office for a meeting one day, and as he squeezed himself into his seat at the conference table, Lauren asked him if he’d like any coffee, tea, or water. The author said, yes, apple juice would be fine. Now, Lauren had never met this man before, and apple juice was not something her office kept on hand. But she found herself nodding, and saying sure, no problem. Then she backed out of the room, returned to her desk, grabbed her wallet, climbed down two floors to the nearest vending machine, fed it a dollar, hit the apple juice button, and out came a bottle of orange juice. She smoothed out another dollar bill and tried again: orange juice. She called the elevator, descended ten more floors, and ran to the corner Walgreens. There she stood in line with two 15.2-ounce bottles of Minute Maid apple juice because she had a premonition that her man was a two-bottle kind of man. Back upstairs, she deposited the apple juice in front of him—along with a glass to pour it into—found a seat, and tucked her hair back, while everyone else at the table watched the author empty the first bottle into the glass, drink it, and immediately repeat with the second. All apple juice was gone within minutes.

  In the midst of entry-level fog, it might not be clear how all this running around and playing fetch could be seen by your superiors as genius, bordering on heroic. “I thought I was being too servile,” Lauren remarked later. “And that maybe, if I wanted to be taken seriously, I shouldn’t designate myself refreshment committee.”

  But volunteering for refreshment committee, grabbing the broom—this was all very American, according to this first generation of career counselors. And by “American” they meant a new kind of personality, and a better one than anything Europeans had come up with. “A Briton might be stolid, a Spaniard suspicious,” one business author chimed in, but an American would do business with anybody. A European might ask too many questions. The American office worker, on the other hand, would clap his hands, rub them together, and ask if there were any packages that needed delivering.8 The American clerk was easygoing, energetic, alert, smart—not too smart—and quick with a smile. Perhaps he smiled so much because he firmly believed he was destined to run the whole show someday. And oddly enough, so did his boss. (Said Carnegie: “I would not give a fig for the young man who does not already see himself the partner or the head of an important firm.”)

  Which is perhaps the best reason not to be yourself. If you think you owe perfect sincerity to a large capitalist concern, or you need to be actively representing the essence of your being at all times, you’re not likely to stay optimistic on the job for long. You could get too self-conscious, thinking that everything you did had to communicate something about you. You might get so self-conscious that you didn’t pay enough attention to other people and their little quirks. You might say, “No, sorry, we don’t have apple juice,” because you thought it was important to draw a line around who you were, and what greater feats you were capable of, and let everybody else deal with the consequences of a cranky old man’s low blood sugar. Or instead, you could forget about yourself for a while; you could stifle the urge
to say what you really wanted to say and demonstrate something else, namely, that here was that once-in-a-long-while underling who was thinking all the time, who had an uncanny sixth sense for when two bottles of Minute Maid plus a glass were called for. Who knew what else you’d pick up on?

  Still, if the posing proves too much, keep in mind these are just the opening moves. Until things get more interesting, here are some other ways to ATTRACT ATTENTION:

  Do realize you don’t have much time. Early business thinkers took the idea that first impressions were important and ran with it. Carnegie claimed that evaluations of an underling started “from the day he begins work.” Alexander, champion of merchant’s clerks, agreed—verdicts on career prospects were reached “before the first week is out.” This premium on speed extended to how you communicated. Cyrus West Field, the man whose company laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic (and presumably someone with a vested commercial interest in long-windedness), advised employees: “Never write a long letter. A business man has not time to read it.” It was better to give a man the compliment of assuming he had more vital things to do than pore over your prose, and get right to your point.

  Do know how you are going to characterize aspects of your life well in advance of being asked to characterize them. Needless to say, limited time meant you had to have answers to many basic, introductory questions at the ready, so you were never caught off-guard, rambling extemporaneously or pointlessly—or worse, too self-conscious for words. This sounds so simple as to be self-evident, but many people appear slightly stunned when asked about where they’re from, what part of the city they live in, where they went to college, or what they studied. They’ll mutter that they studied “psychology” and leave it at that—as if that piece of information alone were enough to captivate people—or they’ll delve into their senior thesis topic, their elective courses, what the dorm food was like, and try to leave everyone with a solid understanding of their overall undergraduate experience, hangovers and all.

  Having a brief biographical summary prepared is important because if you hesitate before speaking, people may wonder why you hesitated, and that wondering can and does lead their imagination down some dark paths. The ideal, as one journalist who once visited with Schwab put it, was “frank self-confidence”—which is to say, reasonably sobered by experience but optimistic about what’s to come. This is why it’s also wise to avoid describing anything as “horrible,” or, alternatively, “totally, totally fantastic, just amazing” in an interview. Gushing can trigger an employer to doubt your ability to see the world clearly.

  One last note on this score: Be prepared, also, to respond gracefully to comments that indulge stereotypes about your part of the country. A West Virginian I know has long had to endure smirks when he—now a New Yorker—tells people where he’s from. It is assumed he doesn’t read, or that he’s into Civil War reenactments. As a native Minnesotan, I get asked whether I’ve ever seen Prince perform live about once a month—roughly the same frequency I’m asked for my thoughts on Garrison Keillor. There is little one can do about this clumsy cultural shorthand—which invariably arises whenever people riff off limited information—at the outset of making someone’s acquaintance. Smile through the stereotypes as best you can, and pass along new information when possible. Whatever you do, don’t get defensive, and start insisting people are crazy to think Detroit’s a tough town.

  Do wear your learning lightly. In jobs and in life, people who try hard to show how very smart they are often get passed over for someone who’s equally bright but easier to get along with. The guy who feels entry-level work insults his intelligence is everywhere. In creative industries, this is the person who drops the name of a 1970s German art rock band into water-cooler conversation and then looks surprised/embarrassed/worried for you when you say you’re not real familiar with them. In financial services, it’s the guy who tosses around EBITDA/EBITA amongst people he knows won’t know what he’s talking about. Having a conversation with this person feels like being dragged onto a quiz show, or being lectured by a manic TA. You don’t want to be this person. (Or, if you do, maybe the office is not the place for you.)

  Don’t be so taken with “authenticity” that you can’t bring yourself to read from a script from time to time.

  You may be expected to say things that sound nothing like you. My friend Josh once assisted a documentary film producer, and this job at times required him to double as office receptionist. Sometimes the person on the line was his boss, calling from his second home in London. Josh’s boss usually started the conversation by thanking Josh just for being there, being there in the office, and then immediately launching into a lament that nobody, absolutely nobody, loved him. After several awkward conversations, Josh eventually learned he was expected to come back with something like, “Oh, but I do. I love you!” Which usually got an audible sigh from the boss before he’d go on to say, “But nobody understands me,” and then Josh would have to clear his throat and cough up reassurance that, in fact, his boss was understood by many people, many important people, too—but not that many, of course, because as a filmmaker he was wrestling with some really deep, complex issues that not everyone could appreciate. Don’t assume people know you’ve got designs on moving up. Your bosses might have you pegged as someone who prefers clocking in and clocking out and doesn’t want or expect anything more than a steady paycheck. If you were such a person, no robber baron was going to do much for you. Said Carnegie: “We make… Bookkeepers, Treasurers, Bank Tellers of this class, and there they remain to the end of the chapter.” This is not to say you should inquire as to when you’re getting a promotion. Simply that you can’t assume your boss is aware of, and sensitive to, your ambitions. Some are, some aren’t.

  Don’t walk in the door with wet hair. If you come in shirt-untucked, or looking in any way like you’re not completely prepared for the day from the moment the boss sees you in the morning, you’re being yourself too much. Another unspoken truth about the first days of entry-level employment, and most significant from a practical standpoint: You need to be at your desk before your boss arrives. After a few months, show up a little later and see what happens.

  Do tell yourself small lies about the glory in drudgery. Alexander suggested that if you started to feel sorry for yourself—he used the example of a clerk walking down Broadway in the bitter cold to deliver a package—remember ancient Sparta. The kids there had it rougher. Alexander also had issues with using the word menial and thought it triggered bad thought patterns. “To consider any thing menial, which belongs to the career of training, is to be a fool. The greatest philosophers and the greatest commanders have passed through toil as humble and as galling.” Best to endure the worst first, he concluded.

  Having galling experiences early on also comes in handy later in your career, when you’ll be expected to trot out hard-luck stories. (More on that in chapter 8.)

  Do have a firm handshake. The authors of 1971’s How to Read a Person Like a Book said a flaccid handshake suggested weakness but also “something vaguely un-American.” All I know is that the dead-fish handshake gives people the impression your mind is elsewhere. It’s usually accompanied by a glance over the shoulder, or off to the side, to see who else is in the room. It borders on offensive, in other words.

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  Knowing how much rests on getting the pose right, meanwhile, might allow you to forgive yourself for taking absurd amounts of time doing very simple tasks that one might think, on first hearing the assignment, shouldn’t take long at all. There’s the day I spent an entire morning composing a three-line cover letter to Martin Amis, for example. All the letter needed to convey was please-read-the-following-page-and-sign-it-and-send-it-back-to-me-thanks. That’s it—four sentences at most. I was a twenty-four-year-old editorial assistant whose previous experience with Martin Amis consisted of gazing longingly at his books on a shelf, and had been on the job two days. Amis was—is—a pedigreed, world-re
nowned author. In the photo that appears on the jacket of his first novel, he bears a striking resemblance to a young Mick Jagger. I was writing to obtain permission to reprint an excerpt from his novel Money in an upcoming anthology my boss was compiling. Whether or not Amis said no—thereby disappointing my boss and everyone else involved with the project—was a matter of some importance. What kept me from knocking the letter out was fear that his answer depended entirely on how well I phrased the question. “Dear Mr. Amis: I am happy to enclose herewith a permissions form requesting…” I stopped. Am I really “happy”? Maybe skip “herewith”? Then again, I thought, Amis is English. He’ll like that word. But he also, I thought, probably has little tolerance for sniveling editorial assistants unable to cough up even a simple sentence without drooling. “Dear Mr. Amis: Enclosed please find a form requesting permission to use your… as described on the attached No, too brusque, I decided. Martin Amis was funny. I should try to make him laugh. A little. Just elicit a wry, salty smile.

  This went on for hours. Meanwhile, nothing else got done. I can’t recall how the letter ended up, but weeks later, I received the desired release form with a scribble in the place where Amis was asked to sign. There was no accompanying note, but I had the signature, or something like it, in hand. Paradise, yes, heaven. You take what you can get in the early days.