Working

by Studs Terkel

  We had a lady come in about six months ago. She wanted her car in the same spot. I said, “Sorry lady, can’t put it in a certain spot.” She said, “I want it in that spot.” She came back and I had it in that spot. She said, “Thank you.” I said, “Okay, lady.” She came back again and we was filled up. She wanted that spot again, and I said, “No, I’m filled, lady. I can’t get you that spot. I can’t get you any spot.” She didn’t give you a tip and she wanted extra service. Okay, if she pay her parking and just get parked, that’s all right. We have regular customers, we don’t worry about tips every day. They tip once a week. We give them what we call soigné service. Those who don’t, we still have to give ’em service, but it ain’t soigné.

  We got a lot of fancy Cadillac cars don’t tip. The workingman is the best tipper. He works all day, he’ll give you a quarter or a half a dollar. But you get some people ridin’ a big Cadillac and fancy dress, he’ll give you a thin dime. But he’ll pull that car in again and if we have the FULL sign, that’s it for him. We have to wave him away. He puts up a beef, but if you don’t answer him, you don’t have no argument.

  I have one big irritation. When people see you getting a car and you got two or three pulls—claim checks—and there might be eight people goin’, you’re trying to pull the easiest cars to make room to get the other people—they think you’re not giving ’em service. There’s a whole crowd and you might not know either one of ‘em, you’re tryin’ to make it easy all around. There’s no need in movin’ the same car over to get the car that’s easier to move out. They still can’t get across the street because traffic is blocked, so what’s the cause of all the confusion?

  They think you’re tryin’ to ignore them. You’re tryin’ to make it easy, but they see you get the other guy and they paid first. When a show breaks up, people panic. “I’m first.” “I gotta get home.” “I gotta catch a plane.” Two men can’t handle no fifteen people at one time. Somebody has to wait. A lot of people go get their own car. They may hit a car or scratch it and then they want to put it on the attendants.

  You can’t go too fast in the parking lot. I once worked five-, six-floor garages. I was much younger then. I’d get in that Cadillac or that Buick or that Volkswagen, whatever is in there, and I’d go around them floors. As you get older, you learn more. There’s a lot of young guys drive fast, which I don’t do no more. It’s a very good feeling if you’re a young man.

  In my younger days I used to be a wizard, I used to really roll. I could spin a car with one hand and never miss a hole. When I got in a new car, I thought it was my car. It was a customer’s car and I was only going upstairs. I know it wasn’t mine, ‘cause at that time I didn’t even own a car. And when I owned a car, I couldn’t own over a hundred-dollar car. So it was a great feelin’ to drive anybody’s new car. When I’d take that car to drive, I thought it was just a dream car.

  It is a very big feeling about a man when he drives in with that car and he get out and he might be in his tuxedo. As a younger man, when a customer’d come in, I’d say, “Gee, that’s a beautiful car, sir.” I’ll just go sit in that car, maybe I’ll just back it up a couple of times. ‘Cause we was never supposed to take the car off the premises, which I never did myself. ’Course, when you got five or six men there, it might be one might go off.

  I was sittin’ in that guy-with-the-tuxedo car. He got out of it, him an’ his girl friend goin’ night clubbing. And that car smelling real good with cologne and the windows be up. And I just be looking in that car, you know, the music be up. I’d pull back in the lot, back to the front, maybe I’ll go back in the stall. I’d say, “Why can’t I be a rich man, get me a lot of money, get me a new car?” ’Cause I rode an old car for eighteen years. The feeling of sitting in that rich man’s car, that’s a great feeling. Different feeling between the workingman’s car and the rich man’s car. It’s something strong in your mind that someday you may get one. It was a hundred to one that you would get it unless somebody will you something or you would be a stickup man.

  As I get older now, a car’s a car. I’m drivin’ a ’65 Pontiac. I know it’s seven years old, but it’s mine. I have to enjoy it. Sure I’d love to have a new car, but I can’t afford it with three babies. I don’t need to be dreamin’ of a Cadillac which I know I can’t get. There’s no need of me dreamin’ for an Imperial Chrysler which I know I can’t get. I used to dream about cars very bad. The last five or six years I haven’t dreamed too much about cars. ’Cause I know I got other things to do for my kids.

  I used to be a chauffeur and it was a dream for me driving, too. I’d drive him to his office and when I drop him off, the car was mine. (Laughs.) I might not have to pick him up for a couple of hours. If I go south or ride around the Loop, I take the chauffeur’s cap off, put my hat on. It’s mine. You always feel the chauffeur drivin’ the rich man’s car is the one really enjoyin’ it more than the rich man.

  I quit chaufferin’. I make more money in a parking lot with tips and salary. When people ask what I do, I tell ’em I park cars just like any other job. Only thing you got is a white collar, that’s okay with me. Working behind a typewriter, that’s fine. You’re a doctor, that’s cool. I got man friends, teachers. We meet sometimes, have a drink, talk. Everything is normal. Everybody got a job to do. My friends never feel superior to me. They’ll say, “I’ll go downtown and park with Lovin’ Al.”

  After twenty-five, thirty years I could drive any car like a baby, like a woman change her baby’s diaper. I could handle that car with one hand. I had a lot of customers would say, “How you do this? The way you go around this way?” I’d say, “Just the way you bake a cake, miss, I can handle this car.” A lotta ladies come to you and a lot of gentlemen come to you, say, “Wow! You can drive!” I say, “Thank you, ma‘am.” They say, “How long you been doin’ it?” I say, “Thirty years. I started when I’m sixteen and I’m still doin’ it.”

  All day is my car. I drive my car to work, and when I get out of my car, it’s a customer’s car. When I leave work at night, I’m in my car. When I get to work in the morning, it’s the customer’s car. All my waking hours is cars. When I go out, my wife drives. I get in the back seat and play with the kids. I drove all week, I tell her, why don’t you drive? If I have an argument on the job, I never discuss it with my wife because she has enough problems, with the kids. And I’m too bushed.

  How long would I continue? I would say I would go another four years, maybe five. ‘Cause I know I can’t continue walking any more. If I ever decide to quit parking cars, I think I could get me a watchman job. Maybe I might be a cashier or pick up tickets at a theater. I know I won’t retire in the parking lot, ’cause they don’t pay any retirement money. The walking is pretty bad on your feet. Every day, I should say I take a good sixty times goin’ and sixty times comin’ back.

  The way I felt about cars when I was young, I used to love to park ‘em. Now when they’re comin’ in so busy, I say, “Where are all the farmer’s goin’?” Saturday’s the roughest day, because people are comin’ in from all angles. Oh, the thrill been gone, oh, fifteen years. I do my work because I know I have to work. Every now and then I have to rub myself down or my wife rubs me down with alcohol. I might last another four, five years at most.

  I was so good when I was nineteen, twenty. A guy bet me five dollars that when a certain car came in I wouldn’t make a hole. I had one hand and I whipped it into that hole, and I did it three times for him. Another guy said, “You’re too short to reach the gas pedal.” I said, “No, I can even push the seat back and I can sit and swing that car in with one swing”—when I was younger. I had one customer, he was a good six feet seven and I’m only five feet three. He said, “You better pull the seat up.” It looked like I was sittin’ in the back seat and I was barely touchin’ the brake. I whipped his car in the hole. He said, “You mean to tell me, short as you are, you put the car in that hole there?” I said, “I never move anybody’s seat.” I may pull myself up and
brace from the wheel, but I never miss that hole. I make that one swing, with one hand, no two hands. And never use the door open, never park a car with the door open. Always I have my head inside the car, lookin’ from the backview mirror. That’s why they call me Lovin’ Al the Wizard, One-Swing Al. They used to call me the Chewin’ Gum Man. I used to chew twenty-five sticks of gum a day. Now I smoke cigars. (He and I puff away in silence for several moments.)

  I was one of the best. I didn’t care where the hiker was from, you coulda bet money on me. They’d say, “Lover, you never miss.” I say, “When I miss, I slip and I don’t slip often.” (Laughs.) I didn’t care how big the car was, I didn’t care how little it was, I never missed my swing.

  I did it for years, since I was nineteen till I got about twenty-seven. Then I started driving normal, like anybody else. That was my most exciting years, when I was nineteen and twenty. Then I got around twenty-seven, I could sense it. I felt slowing down. I was like a prize fighter, he turn in his gloves at thirty. Car hiker, he goes to fifty, sixty. I intend to quit parking cars when I get to fifty-four, fifty-five. I’m pretty good now and I’m forty-nine. I can still wheel good, yeah, pretty good. Lovin’ Al, signing off . . .

  The Selling

  JOHNNY BOSWORTH

  He is one of seven salesmen, working for a car dealer in a middle-class suburb on the outskirts of a large city. He is twenty-seven, married, and has a small child. His wife, he implies, comes from a well-to-do family, while “I’m a country boy. I wasn’t able to finish school. Our family was kinda big and didn’t have the money that most families do.”

  His hair is styled, his dress is modish, and his mustache is well-trimmed Fu Manchu. In the apartment a hi-fi set, a small TV set, several cassettes, a variety of sound equipment, and a small poodle running about. Though he doesn’t drink, he suggested to his guest, who was reaching for Cutty Sark, Chivas Regal. “Until a couple of months ago, I was a greaser. My hair was slicked back. My wife insisted . . .” (She had worked as a Playboy bunny.

  He has been a car salesman for four years, though “I’ve been selling since I was fourteen. Door to door, magazines, pots and pans, anything.”

  If you hit a person’s logic, you’ve got ‘im. Unless you’ve got a ding-aling. Everybody can sell an idiot. An idiot, Jesus, I wish I had fifty thousand of ’em a day, because you can sell ‘em the world. You can sell ’em the Brooklyn Bridge.

  I don’t stand around on pins and needles like a lot of guys there, afraid to do this, afraid to do that. If I think it’s gonna benefit me, I’m gonna do it. You never know unless you try. My office is different than anyone else’s. I try to fix it up, to make it look more comfortable instead of like a butcher room, which is what they refer to an office, the closing room, the box. I got a nice desk from Dunhill. I bring my own TV down so customers can watch. I’ve got radios, different gadgets, trinkets, whatnots. Books, magazines, Playboy. I just try to make it a little presentable.

  I’m not really a good salesman. The product sells itself. The only thing that makes me good is I try to put myself in the customer’s place. If I was to purchase a car, I know how I’d want to be treated. I wouldn’t want to be pushed.

  I threw a man out a couple of weeks ago. I just walked in the door and there’s a guy standing there. He says, “Hey!” I says, “Excuse me, can I help you?” He says, “How much is this car?” He’s pointing to a Dart Swinger. I said, “Let me check the book.” He says, “What do you mean, check the book?” I says, “Sir, I don’t have prices of all the cars in my head.” He says, “All right, check the book.” You know, rude attitude. So I checked the book and gave the guy a price. He says, “You gotta be kiddin’!” I give him the price, which is two hundred dollars over cost, which is very fair. I says, “That’s what the car costs, sir.”

  I figured I got nothing with this guy going. There’s already a personality clash. I proceeded to the back and get my coffee, and this guy walks back. There’s cars all over the floor. He points to another one and says, “How much is that car?” I says, “Again, sir, you mean the car there or one like it? Give me an idea of what kind of car you want. Let me help you.” He says, “I didn’t ask you. I asked the price.” I says, “Okay, if that’s your attitude. The price is on the window.” He says, “Boy, you guys are all alike, you’re a bunch of jagoffs.” I said, “What?” He said, “You heard me, you punk, you’re all a bunch of jagoffs.” So I walked over to him and I said, “Look, pal, all I do is come here and work. I’m gonna treat you like a gentleman as much as I can. You’re gonna treat me the same. Otherwise you and I aren’t gonna get along.” So he says, “You mother-this, you mother-that,” started calling me names and everything else. So I said, “Please, go to my boss and maybe he’ll fire me.” The guy says, “Aaahhh, I oughta punch your head in.” When he said that I said, “You got two seconds to hit that door.” He said, “What are you talkin’ about?” So I grabbed him and pushed him out the front door.

  I went to my boss and said, “You heard the disturbance out there. Do what you want to do, but that’s the way it is.” He said, “You were wrong. You shoulda punched him and knocked his teeth out.” I get along real good with my boss. I go play golf with him. This guy has time to be a human being.

  A long-haired kid comes in and they don’t wait on him because they figure he’s a dreck. That’s the term they use. “Dreck” means nothing. The Jewish people brought most of the expressions in here. I jump on these kids. I try to sell ’em. Most of the long-haired kids here, their father’s a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher. They got money. They’re not hard to please. If the kid likes the car, all you have to do when the parent comes in is hit them with a little bit of logic. The kid usually wants a fast, souped-up car, a convertible more or less, with four-speed engine, all high performance. He wants the car to look real sharp. You go along with him some way, but I try to get him away from the four-speed because it’s the worst thing in the world on a car. When you trade the car in, it loses $500 if it’s a four-speed. You lose $250 in value if it’s a stick shift.

  I hit them with a little logic, too. Is your mother and father gonna go for this? The insurance is gonna run a little higher. When the parents come in, you gotta go with them. You tell ’em it’s okay to have a big engine, because it’s no worse than a six-cylinder. A six-cylinder will go 80 miles an hour, that’s enough to get killed. The big engines, they go 100 to 140, but there’s no place you can do it in the city anyway. You just try to suit both parties. I learned that from life. You have to bend.

  Factory people are much easier to sell. A doctor calls up and he’s a little arrogant sometimes. I want this, I want that, my buddy can get it three hundred dollars cheaper, so you better give me a good deal or forget it. They call you on the phone and want you to quote a price and everything else. That’s all fine and good, except you know their buddy can’t give ’em anything three hundred dollars cheaper. I know the prices of all the cars. That’s one of the hardest things to get across to people, that we’ve all gotta make a living.

  The blue collar is easier to sell, not so much because he’s dumb, because a lot of ‘em are lots smarter than some of these psychiatrists. They’re more down-to-earth. They can’t afford to take time out and go shopping, where a doctor and a lawyer, he can take off two or three weeks at a time. The guy that works in the factory nine times out of ten, you put ’em in the car that day. If you give him a car to drive home, give him a certain amount of money for his trade-in that he’s content with, you’ve got a sale. He doesn’t care about the profit you’re making.

  If you’re a real good salesman, you can put ‘em in the car that you want and just forget about the car they want. You can sell ’em the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course, I’m not that type of salesman. I’m not that far advanced. I study people, I’m still learning.

  I like people. If it’s a hippie, I ask him, “Do you smoke grass? Do you take dope? Do you like this type of music?” I try to find out things to make ‘em relax. I als
o keep askin’ questions that they’ll answer yes. Get them in the habit of saying yes. When you say, “Will you give me the order?” they’ll say yes rather than no because they haven’t said no for a long time. “Do you like baseball? You like the way they play it today?” “Yeah.” Whatever it takes to get ‘em to say yes. A woman, you ask about fashions. Get ’em in the habit of saying yes.

  Would you like to sell the Brooklyn Bridge?

  No, because that would be taking advantage of someone. This may be hard to believe, but I don’t enjoy taking advantage of people. Most of the salesmen in this business, they tell you it’s a cutthroat world, you gotta screw your brother before your brother screws you. I disagree with that. I’ve been screwed many times myself because I’ve helped other people. They’ve turned around and just kicked me in the head. Rather than rebel and say I hate the world, I chalk it up to experience.

  Black people, they’re the easiest to sell, the easiest in the world. If you can make them think they’re gettin’ somethin’ for nothin’, oh, they grab it quick. You give them a sharp car, man, that shines and glistens, make the neighbors think them as really big strong people, rich and all that, they eat it up. You can sell ’em one, two, three.

  Worst person in the world to sell is a pipe smoker. Pipe smoker comes in, I let him go to someone else. They’ll sit there all day, kill your time. They all think they’re geniuses. They think this pipe is a symbol. And they keep asking you all these questions. They picked up a book before they came and they learned a couple of words—you know, transmission or engine or cubic inches. They try to be a professor. I just tell ‘em, “Look, did you come here to buy a car or did you come in to match wits with me?” ’Cause I’ll match my IQ with Einstein. I happen to have a very high IQ.