Working

by Studs Terkel

  Sometimes they’ll ask you if you want something to drink or a Coke. Then I’ll sit around and talk to the people, ’cause if they’re nice enough to offer me a cookie or a coke, I’ll say, “Sure” (laughs), and shoot the breeze for five or ten minutes. I wish it would happen more often. Then I’d probably get done at the normal time. I would probably take my time a bit more. Usually I have to go outside and get the hose going and sneak a drink of water that way. If they caught me, they’d wonder what I was doing. Most people are just preoccupied or overwhelmed with what they have to do, rather than bother with me. Maybe they have their laundry to do.

  The big subject of conversation with us is dogs and women. “You shoulda seen this one in a bathing suit, real cute.” If you have a nice cute chicken, that kinda brightens up your whole day. If they’re younger women and they’re nice looking, we have a code we put on the card. We put a Q—that stands for cutie. Then the guy’ll stop and read the house for sure. But they’ve never gotten down to the nitty-gritty.

  There’s been times when the little boy would let you in and say, “Go down in the basement.” I don’t do this no more. When I first started, I didn’t know any better. So I went down and the woman was doing her laundry nude. It shocked me as much as it shocked her. I had one woman answer the door nude. She told me later she thought it was her girl friend. I thought I was the electric meter man instead of the gas meter man when I opened the door. (Laughs.) Completely confused. Nothing’s happened physically yet. One of these days it will.

  I do this one Jewish party in Skokie. The women there, I wouldn’t say they’re pretty wild, but they’re older and when they see a young man come in the house, wants to read their gas meter, you know. (Laughs.) It’s that kind of thing. It would depend on the women. I wouldn’t . . .

  If you see a nice lady sitting there in a two-piece bathing suit—if you work it right and they’ll be laying on their stomach in the sun and they’ll have their top strap undone—if you go there and you scare ‘em good enough, they’ll jump up. To scare ’em where they jump up and you would be able to see them better, this takes time and it gives you something to do. It adds excitement to your day. If you startle ‘em they’ll say, “You could’ve said something earlier, rather than just jumping up behind me yelling, ’Gas man’!” You have to make excitement for yourself.

  Usually women follow you downstairs to make sure that maybe you’re not gonna take nothin’. It definitely is a reflection. Of course, if she’s wearing a nice short skirt, you follow her back up the stairs. (Laughs.) It’s to occupy your day, you know? To pass the time of the day.

  BRETT HAUSER

  He is seventeen. He had worked as a box boy at a supermarket in a middle-class suburb on the outskirts of Los Angeles. “People come to the counter and you put things in their bags for them. And carry things to their cars. It was a grind.”

  You have to be terribly subservient to people: “Ma’am, can I take your bag?” “Can I do this?” It was at a time when the grape strikers were passing out leaflets. They were very respectful. People’d come into the check stand, they’d say, “I just bought grapes for the first time because of those idiots outside.” I had to put their grapes in the bag and thank them for coming and take them outside to the car. Being subservient made me very resentful.

  It’s one of a chain of supermarkets. They’re huge complexes with bakeries in them and canned music over those loud-speakers—Muzak. So people would relax while they stopped. They played selections from Hair. They’d play “Guantanamera,” the Cuban Revolution song. They had Soul on Ice, the Cleaver book, on sale. They had everything dressed up and very nice. People wouldn’t pay any attention to the music. They’d go shopping and hit their kids and talk about those idiots passing out anti-grape petitions.

  Everything looks fresh and nice. You’re not aware that in the back room it stinks and there’s crates all over the place and the walls are messed up. There’s graffiti and people are swearing and yelling at each other. You walk through the door, the music starts playing, and everything is pretty. You talk in hushed tones and are very respectful.

  You wear a badge with your name on it. I once met someone I knew years ago. I remembered his name and said, “Mr. Castle, how are you?” We talked about this and that. As he left, he said, “It was nice talking to you, Brett.” I felt great, he remembered me. Then I looked down at my name plate. Oh shit. He didn’t remember me at all, he just read the name plate. I wish I put “Irving” down on my name plate. If he’d have said, “Oh yes, Irving, how could I forget you . . . ?” I’d have been ready for him. There’s nothing personal here.

  You have to be very respectful to everyone—the customers, to the manager, to the checkers. There’s a sign on the cash register that says: Smile at the customer. Say hello to the customer. It’s assumed if you’re a box boy, you’re really there ’cause you want to be a manager some day. So you learn all the little things you have absolutely no interest in learning.

  The big things there is to be an assistant manager and eventually manager. The male checkers had dreams of being manager, too. It was like an internship. They enjoyed watching how the milk was packed. Each manager had his own domain. There was the ice cream manager, the grocery manager, the dairy case manager . . . They had a sign in the back: Be good to your job and your job will be good to you. So you take an overriding concern on how the ice cream is packed. You just die if something falls off a shelf. I saw so much crap there I just couldn’t take. There was a black boy, an Oriental box boy, and a kid who had a Texas drawl. They needed the job to subsist. I guess I had the luxury to hate it and quit.

  When I first started there, the manager said, “Cut your hair. Come in a white shirt, black shoes, a tie. Be here on time.” You get there, but he isn’t there. I just didn’t know what to do. The checker turns around and says, “You new? What’s your name?” “Brett.” “I’m Peggy.” And that’s all they say and they keep throwing this down to you. They’ll say, “Don’t put it in that, put it in there.” But they wouldn’t help you.

  You had to keep your apron clean. You couldn’t lean back on the railings. You couldn’t talk to the checkers. You couldn’t accept tips. Okay, I’m outside and I put it in the car. For a lot of people, the natural reaction is to take out a quarter and give it to me. I’d say, “I’m sorry, I can’t.” They’d get offended. When you give someone a tip, you’re sort of suave. You take a quarter and you put it in their palm and you expect them to say, “Oh, thanks a lot.” When you say, “I’m sorry, I can’t,” they feel a little put down. They say, “No one will know.” And they put it in your pocket. You say, “I really can’t.” It gets to a point where you have to do physical violence to a person to avoid being tipped. It was not consistent with the store’s philosophy of being cordial. Accepting tips was a cordial thing and made the customer feel good. I just couldn’t understand the incongruity. One lady actually put it in my pocket, got in the car, and drove away. I would have had to throw the quarter at her or eaten it or something.

  When it got slow, the checkers would talk about funny things that happened. About Us and Them. Us being the people who worked there, Them being the stupid fools who didn’t know where anything was—just came through and messed everything up and shopped. We serve them but we don’t like them. We know where everything is. We know what time the market closes and they don’t. We know what you do with coupons and they don’t. There was a camaraderie of sorts. It wasn’t healthy, though. It was a put-down of the others.

  There was this one checker who was absolutely vicious. He took great delight in making every little problem into a major crisis from which he had to emerge victorious. A customer would give him a coupon. He’d say, “You were supposed to give me that at the beginning.” She’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry.” He’d say, “Now I gotta open the cash register and go through the whole thing. Madam, I don’t watch out for every customer. I can’t manage your life.” A put-down.

  It never bothered me when
I would put something in the bag wrong. In the general scheme of things, in the large questions of the universe, putting a can of dog food in the bag wrong is not of great consequence. For them it was.

  There were a few checkers who were nice. There was one that was incredibly sad. She could be unpleasant at times, but she talked to everybody. She was one of the few people who genuinely wanted to talk to people. She was saying how she wanted to go to school and take courses so she could get teaching credit. Someone asked her, “Why don’t you?” She said, “I have to work here. My hours are wrong. I’d have to get my hours changed.” They said, “Why don’t you?” She’s worked there for years. She had seniority. She said, “Jim won’t let me.” Jim was the manager. He didn’t give a damn. She wanted to go to school, to teach, but she can’t because every day she’s got to go back to the supermarket and load groceries. Yet she wasn’t bitter. If she died a checker and never enriched her life, that was okay, because those were her hours.

  She was extreme in her unpleasantness and her consideration. Once I dropped some grape juice and she was squawking like a bird. I came back and mopped it up. She kept saying to me, “Don’t worry about it. It happens to all of us.” She’d say to the customers, “If I had a dime for all the grape juice I dropped . . .”

  Jim’s the boss. A fish-type handshake. He was balding and in his forties. A lot of managers are these young, clean-shaven, neatly cropped people in their twenties. So Jim would say things like “groovy.” You were supposed to get a ten-minute break every two hours. I lived for that break. You’d go outside, take your shoes off, and be human again. You had to request it. And when you took it, they’d make you feel guilty.

  You’d go up and say, “Jim, can I have a break?” He’d say, “A break? You want a break? Make it a quick one, nine and a half minutes.” Ha ha ha. One time I asked the assistant manager, Henry. He was even older than Jim. “Do you think I can have a break?” He’d say, “You got a break when you were hired.” Ha ha ha. Even when they joked it was a put-down.

  The guys who load the shelves are a step above the box boys. It’s like upperclassmen at an officer candidate’s school. They would make sure that you conformed to all the prescribed rules, because they were once box boys. They know what you’re going through, your anxieties. But instead of making it easier for you, they’d make it harder. It’s like a military institution.

  I kept getting box boys who came up to me, “Has Jim talked to you about your hair? He’s going to because it’s getting too long. You better get it cut or grease it back or something.” They took delight in it. They’d come to me before Jim had told me. Everybody was out putting everybody down . . .

  BABE SECOLI

  She’s a checker at a supermarket. She’s been at it for almost thirty years. “I started at twelve—a little, privately owned grocery store across the street from the house. They didn’t have no cash registers. I used to mark the prices down on a paper bag.

  “When I got out of high school, I didn’t want no secretary job. I wanted the grocery job. It was so interesting for a young girl. I just fell into it. I don’t know no other work but this. It’s hard work, but I like it. This is my life.”

  We sell everything here, millions of items. From potato chips and pop—we even have a genuine pearl in a can of oysters. It sells for two somethin’. Snails with the shells that you put on the table, fanciness. There are items I never heard of we have here. I know the price of every one. Sometimes the boss asks me and I get a kick out of it. There isn’t a thing you don’t want that isn’t in this store.

  You sort of memorize the prices. It just comes to you. I know half a gallon of milk is sixty-four cents; a gallon, $1.10. You look at the labels. A small can of peas, Raggedy Ann. Green Giant, that’s a few pennies more. I know Green Giant’s eighteen and I know Raggedy Ann is fourteen. I know Del Monte is twenty-two. But lately the prices jack up from one day to another. Margarine two days ago was forty-three cents. Today it’s forty-nine. Now when I see Imperial comin’ through, I know it’s forty-nine cents. You just memorize. On the register is a list of some prices, that’s for the part-time girls. I never look at it.

  I don’t have to look at the keys on my register. I’m like the secretary that knows her typewriter. The touch. My hand fits. The number nine is my big middle finger. The thumb is number one, two and three and up. The side of my hand uses the bar for the total and all that.

  I use my three fingers—my thumb, my index finger, and my middle finger. The right hand. And my left hand is on the groceries. They put down their groceries. I got my hips pushin’ on the button and it rolls around on the counter. When I feel I have enough groceries in front of me, I let go of my hip. I’m just movin’—the hips, the hand, and the register, the hips, the hand, and the register . . . (As she demonstrates, her hands and hips move in the manner of an Oriental dancer.) You just keep goin’, one, two, one, two. If you’ve got that rhythm, you’re a fast checker. Your feet are flat on the floor and you’re turning your head back and forth.

  Somebody talks to you. If you take your hand off the item, you’re gonna forget what you were ringin’. It’s the feel. When I’m pushin’ the items through I’m always having my hand on the items. If somebody interrupts to ask me the price, I’ll answer while I’m movin’. Like playin’ a piano.

  I’m eight hours a day on my feet. It’s just a physical tire of standing up. When I get home I get my second wind. As far as standin’ there, I’m not tired. It’s when I’m roamin’ around tryin’ to catch a shoplifter. There’s a lot of shoplifters in here. When I see one, I’m ready to run for them.

  When my boss asks me how I know, I just know by the movements of their hands. And with their purses and their shopping bags and their clothing rearranged. You can just tell what they’re doin’ and I’m never wrong so far.

  The best kind shoplift. They’re not doin’ this because they need the money. A very nice class of people off Lake Shore Drive. They do it every day—men and women. Lately it’s been more or less these hippies, livin’ from day to day . . .

  It’s meats. Some of these women have big purses. I caught one here last week. She had two big packages of sirloin strips in her purse. That amounted to ten dollars. When she came up to the register, I very politely said, “Would you like to pay for anything else, without me embarrassing you?” My boss is standing right there. I called him over. She looked at me sort of on the cocky side. I said, “I know you have meat in your purse. Before your neighbors see you, you either pay for it or take it out.” She got very snippy. That’s where my boss stepped in. “Why’d you take the meat?” She paid for it.

  Nobody knows it. I talk very politely. My boss doesn’t do anything drastic. If they get rowdy, he’ll raise his voice to embarrass ’em. He tells them not to come back in the store again.

  I have one comin’ in here, it’s razor blades. He’s a very nice dressed man in his early sixties. He doesn’t need these razor blades any more than the man in the moon. I’ve been following him and he knows it. So he’s layin’ low on the razor blades. It’s little petty things like this. They’re mad at somebody, so they have to take their anger out on something.

  We had one lady, she pleaded with us that she wanted to come back—not to have her husband find out. My boss told her she was gonna be watched wherever she went. But that was just to put a little fright in her. Because she was just an elderly person. I would be too embarrassed to come into a store if this would happen. But I guess it’s just the normal thing these days—any place you go. You have to feel sorry for people like this. I like ’em all.

  My family gets the biggest kick out of the shoplifters: “What happened today?” (Laughs.) This is about the one with the meat in her purse. She didn’t need that meat any more than the man in the moon.

  Some of ‘em, they get angry and perturbed at the prices, and they start swearin’ at me. I just look at ‘em. You have to consider the source. I just don’t answer them, because before you know it I�
�ll get in a heated argument. The customer’s always right. Doesn’t she realize I have to buy the same food? I go shopping and pay the same prices. I’m not gettin’ a discount. The shoplifters, they say to me, “Don’t you want for something?” Yes, I want and I’m standing on my feet all day and I got varicose veins. But I don’t walk out of here with a purse full of meat. When I want a piece of steak I buy a piece of steak.

  My feet, they hurt at times, very much so. When I was eighteen years old I put the bathing suit on and I could see the map on my leg. From standing, standing. And not the proper shoes. So I wear like nurse’s shoes with good inner sole arch support, like Dr. Scholl’s. They ease the pain and that’s it. Sometimes I go to bed, I’m so tired that I can’t sleep. My feet hurt as if I’m standing while I’m in bed.

  I love my job. I’ve got very nice bosses. I got a black manager and he’s just beautiful. They don’t bother you as long as you do your work. And the pay is terrific. I automatically get a raise because of the union. Retail Clerks. Right now I’m ready for retirement as far as the union goes. I have enough years. I’m as high up as I can go. I make $189 gross pay. When I retire I’ll make close to five hundred dollars a month. This is because of the union. Full benefits. The business agents all know me by name. The young kids don’t stop and think what good the union’s done.

  Sometimes I feel some of these girls are overpaid. They don’t do the work they’re supposed to be doin’. Young girls who come in, they just go plunk, plunk, so slow. All the old customers, they say, “Let’s go to Babe,” because I’m fast. That’s why I’m so tired while these young girls are going dancin’ at night. They don’t really put pride in their work. To me, this is living. At times, when I feel sick, I come to work feelin’ I’ll pep up here. Sometimes it doesn’t. (Laughs.)