Working

by Studs Terkel

  EUGENE: Sort of a hobby, they think. Because it’s so enjoyable. I get a big kick out of it, because there are so many facets. Other people go through a routine. At a certain time, they punch a clock . . . Then they’re through with it and then their life begins. With us the piano business is an integral part of our life.

  NATALIE: Oh yes, yes, yes. He obviously does it with a great deal of relish and enthusiasm. We have the feeling that millions of people are putting in time at work they don’t especially adore. And they look forward when they retire to opening a little antique business or something else that they will truly delight in. Because that’s the great American fantasy. They say all Americans secretly want to own a night club. I never did. But I’m not very American. I worked in them and so did Gene, and perhaps that’s why. Another myth is that all American girls want to be stewardesses or girl singers. I don’t think that’s true—not if you’ve done either. (Laughs.) But apparently the most middle-class American dream is opening up a dear little antique shop, somewhere safe and pleasant. We know several dealers who live a divine life. They’re moneyed people and it’s a perfectly adorable little hobby for them. They’re never in their shop. You see the same merchandise year after year. Nothing’s moving. If you think of an antique shop as a source of income, you can’t approach it that way. It’s cutthroat—frightfully. It doesn’t mean you have to be crooked to succeed, but there’s a tremendous amount of it. Gene knows the field and he can spot fakes.

  (Laughs lightly.) I’m less of a scientist than Gene, less of an engineer. More of a business person, yes. But I rather like it. Frankly, I’ll tell you something. When I retire, if we can ever afford to, I’m sure not going to go into the music business or the antique business. No.

  EUGENE: I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I’m like the window washer who was asked, “Do you enjoy washing windows?” He said, “No, I don’t.” They said, “Why don’t you quit your job?” He said, “What else is there to do?” (Laughs.) I love that.

  (Quickly.) Of course, I enjoy my work. And I know others in the field have a high opinion of me.

  NATALIE: When we got married, he was working with a band, though he had a shop. I started apartment hunting. I said he was a merchant or that he was a technician because everybody said, “My God, don’t tell them your husband’s a musician. You’ll never get an apartment.” There’s a strong prejudice against musicians. They think they’re birds of passage, perhaps, or that he’ll give drunken parties. There’s still an aura of sinfulness about it.

  EUGENE: Everything we do in our lives has something to do with respectability. What it appears to someone else is not too important as long as we do a good job and as long as we do it honestly. It’s the real life. If you’re using people and you gain by exploitation—I couldn’t live that way.

  I’ve never really had anybody put me down. There seems something mystic about music, about piano tuning. There’s so much beauty comes out of music. So much beauty comes out of piano tuning. I start working at chord progressions . . .

  NATALIE : He’s learning Bach.

  EUGENE: I know enough chords to get the sounds that I want to hear out of it. I was tuning a piano for a trombone player who once played for Jan Savitt. As I was tuning, I played around with Savitt’s theme song, “Out of Space.” I got those big augmented eleventh chords progressing down in ninths. It’s a beautiful thing. He came dashing in the room. “Where did you hear that? How did you know it?” I hear great big fat augmented chords that you don’t hear in music today. I came home one day and said, “I just heard a diminished chord today!”

  I have a mood of triumph. I was sitting one day tuning a piano in a hotel ballroom. There was a symposium of computer manufacturers. One of these men came up and tapped me on the shoulder. “Someday we’re going to get your job.” I laughed. “By the time you isolate an infinite number of harmonics, you’re going to use up a couple of billion dollars worth of equipment to get down to the basic fundamental that I work with my ear.” He said, “You know something? You’re right. We’ll never touch your job.” The cost of computerized tuning would be absolutely prohibitive. I felt pretty good at that moment.

  BROKERS

  MARGARET RICHARDS

  She has been a realty broker for the past five years. Widowed, she has two grown children. “This is a new career.” She worked in her younger days, “before I took something like twenty years out to raise a family.” She works for a firm, along with twenty-seven colleagues. “It’s very aggressive, in the nicest sense of the word. Good thinking, new thinking. They believe in advertising. I think we’re performing a great service in the area.”

  She has lived in this area for thirty-four years. Her husband was a banker, from whom she inherited a comfortable income. “My family will eat and be housed and be clothed whether I sell real estate or not.” It is an upper-middle-class enclave of suburbs to the north of a large industrial city.

  “To qualify as a broker, you go to school and take the state exam. You have to understand surveys, you have to understand mortgages, you have to understand title charges, closing costs. You have to understand about zoning.”

  Being a realtor is something I enjoy very much. It probably has something to do with being nosy. The niftiest part is to be in on the ground floor of this decision making. A house is the largest investment a family can make. They say college education has taken that over, it’s gotten so expensive. Well, number two is to buy a house. It becomes pretty vital in the lives of these people.

  There has not been a good image in the past of realtors. Do you suppose it fell in with the same thing as a used car salesman? Somebody who is just buying and selling? Yet they always ask your advice. Nothin’s so bad about that. (Laughs.) About neighborhoods, schools, parks. The most rewarding thing for me personally is to work with young people buying their first house. You find out just how important a fireplace is. Who needs a basement? (Laughs.) “We really don’t have to have a garage, but we’ve got to have a fireplace.” (Laughs.) That kind of thing.

  One of the nicest parts is the continual influx of people from all over the country, all ages. It would be easy to stagnate in a village, where you only see people of similar backgrounds. I find it stimulating to be exposed to someone that isn’t cut out of the same piece of cloth as I am.

  I thought, Why not try real estate? Houses, I love. I’m probably a frustrated architect at heart. (Laughs.) I started as a secretary and then went into the sales end of it. It’s infinitely more lucrative. The commission is six percent of the first fifty thousand dollars and five percent on anything above that. Always meeting new people, always meeting new situations, that’s the kicker.

  This is a very competitive area. There are a good many seasoned, highly professional realtors in this area. So you do step on each other’s toes. It’s seldom intentional. If somebody picks up the Sunday paper and reads an ad about a house listed with me and they call me, I can tell in two minutes whether they’ve been looking for houses with someone else. If they don’t volunteer the information, I’ll ask them. I encourage them to call their own realtor. If they’re working with one who has given them good service, has given them time, for heaven’s sake, stick with him or her. My time is too valuable to spend with people who are shopping with other brokers. The odds are not so good there. I will do my best for anybody who sticks with me. I’ll give them my very best service and I’m entitled to their loyalty.

  As we get into integration, that kind of thing, realtors take the stand that they represent buyers and sellers. They do not have a stand to take themselves. A realtor is hired. It’s not up to him to educate you about who you want to sell your house to or who you shouldn’t. There’s a feeling that realtors ought to take a more active stand. Our position is: he owns it, we don’t. We simply represent him—within the framework of the law, of course. I have never been instructed not to sell to a black family or to a Jewish family. I’m not naïve. I’m sure there must be cases. But it has not happen
ed to me. Our average house is fifty thousand dollars apiece, so you’re limited right there.

  This Sunday I will hold a house open from one to four. It will be advertised in the newspaper. I will be there to answer questions. Individuals who are looking for a house will undoubtedly come. Other brokers will bring their clients. I’m representing the seller. We cooperate. Hopefully the owners of the house will not be there from one to four. It’s better for them. That’s a hard experience for an owner—somebody walking through and saying, “Why did she ever pick this color for the living room?” You’re there taking the names of people going through. Watching the house, showing it to its best advantage. Although I don’t hesitate to point out what I think are bad features.

  About twenty years ago there were many part time ladies in this field. Ladies who had lunch with friends and somebody said, “I’m looking for a house.” So you found them a house and that was your contribution and your workday. This is frowned upon and no longer condoned. If you’re going to hold a realtor’s license, you declare this is your occupation and you’re doing nothing else. I think that’s good. Men who are supporting their families doing this should not be undermined by the ladies luncheon realtor.

  A woman realtor makes very good sense. Women know more about kitchens than men. (Laughs.) By and large, it’s the woman who buys the house. Most men, in my experience, let the wife decide, as long as the price is right and the schools are okay and he can get to the train. She’s going to be spending the time in it. What pleases her pleases him. Naturally a woman can better understand a woman’s needs and find what she’s looking for.

  You’ve got business transfers. These are an active thing. Maybe the guy’s been promoted and comes in from Connecticut. They lived in a very attractive thirty-five-thousand-dollar house and, boy, they can spend sixty thousand now. They begin to cry a little when they see what they’re gonna get for sixty thousand dollars. (Laughs.) It isn’t as pretty as the thirty-five-thousand-dollar home they left in Connecticut. Status is important when they first come looking. They’re apt to get over that when they see that some of the best areas have ugly stucco houses. But they’re close to the schools, close to the beach, there’s good transportation, and good things going on for the kids. Status goes out the window. They want to know if there are children on the block. We don’t get many questions about ethnic groups. Status goes out the window.

  Of course you get tensions. I just had a three-thousand-dollar deal fall apart. It didn’t look good from the beginning, that’s the only thing I can say about it. (Laughs.) It’s been listed with me for six months. Another broker brought in an offer on it. I actually didn’t spend more than eight or ten hours on this deal. But if you compound the time I’ve spent holding this house open, writing ads, showing it, answering phone calls, writing letters—yeah, yeah, it’s a lot of time, yeah.

  Some days are just like lightning. This last year, from the first of April until the middle of August, I had one Sunday at home. I can’t show a house much before ten or eleven ’ on a Sunday morning. But I’d be showing three or four houses between eleven and one. Then I’d be going to a house I’d be holding open maybe from two to five. Then somebody’d come in, they’d like to look at others. First thing you know it’s seven thirty and I’d be dragging in. It can be very tiring.

  On these open house mornings when you’re going into house after house, there’s an old trick. You go in on the first floor and then you go to the second floor, instead of going to the basement. From the second floor you can go down two flights to the basement. Then you just have to come up one. If you go to the basement first, you’ve got to climb two flights. (Laughs.) It keeps you in shape. (Laughs.) It’s very important when you’re showing a house that you be spry, that the stairs may not seem too high. If you go clombering, breathing heavy up the stairs, she may think, “How am I going to get my laundry up those stairs?” So . . .

  I hear people say this is just like selling cars, nothing to it. I think there’s a great deal to it. To me, the most exciting thing in the world is picking up the phone and having someone say, “Some friends are coming to town. Can you help them?” I hear some realtors say, “I hate showing somebody the first time.” What that really means is: I hate meeting them, feeling uncomfortable. I’m excited about that couple I haven’t seen. I’m excited about seeing them and getting to know them. I think that’s fun. As long as I can make those stairs. (Laughs.)

  JAMES CARSON

  He has been a yacht broker for forty-one years. “I perform essentially the same service as a real estate broker. I locate yachts for customers. Every sale I make takes approximately 170 hours of effort. I can show the same yacht to twenty people before I have a buyer. The average number of yachts I sell a year is twenty. I’ve sold roughly eight hundred since I’ve been in the business.”

  He sells used yachts, valued at fifteen thousand dollars or more. “I don’t have a showroom. It is where the yacht is at the moment. In the summertime they’re usually in harbors. In the wintertime they’re put in storage. I don’t like to sell ’em if they’re more than ten years old.

  “There’s salesmen that sell new yachts and they’re dealers. They work right from the factory and they’re required to buy so many yachts. I tried that and gave it up. It’s not for me. You’re on a treadmill. To keep your dealership you have to sell X number of new yachts a year. If there’s a recession, the bank takes away most of the dealer’s money. It’s a pretty rough business. The dealer, unless he has a loyal manufacturer, can get in big trouble. I’ve seen many of ’em take on a dealership and then have the factory selling yachts right in his territory through a phony dealership. This ends up in bitterness and law suits. All that glitters is not gold when you sell yachts.”

  I find unfortunately, after forty-one years in this business, that up to eighty percent of the people take advantage of a situation. (Laughs.) It’s a sour way to look at humanity, but it’s the way I have found it.

  Most of the time the seller calls me. Or else I’m a yacht locator. A buyer calls and says, “I’m looking for a thirty-four-foot Tartan sloop. This is what starts me off on my 170-your search. I maintain my own file system. My radius is about three hundred miles. Some of these people want you to pay their fare back and forth. I could go broke flying people around the country.

  I had a brother-in-law, when he was bored on a Sunday afternoon, he’d go look at houses. There was no intention of buying one, but he took up a lot of the real estate broker’s time. In my younger days, when I was naïve, I spent a good deal of time not only showing yachts but taking people out for a two-hour cruise on the lake. Also feed ‘em at the yacht club. They’d walk away without a thank you and you’d never see ’em again. That’s human nature. Now I don’t take anyone out on a yacht unless there’s a deposit subject to inspection.

  The seller pays the commission. It’s a fixed price—seven percent. That’s what I started with forty-one years ago and that’s what I’ll end with. Others charge ten percent. I make a living out of it. I feel that maybe I should charge more, but I’m getting ready to fold up and that’s it.

  I usually have the seller on a written contract. Sometimes this is not possible. Sometimes a customer calls up and says, “What have you got in a forty-two-foot half-cabin cruiser.” I’ll say, “I just got a listing over the phone.” He’ll say, “Let’s go out and look at it.” We’ll go out to the yacht and the owner has a key hidden somewhere. I’ve never met the man. So maybe by the end of the day I’ll have a deposit check and no contract to sell. I’ve been burned here, too. Buyer and seller get together . . .

  There’s a wide variety of people who buy yachts. He could be a carpenter, could be a doctor, any average man on the street. I’ve sold yachts to every class of workman. I’d say ninety-nine percent of our yachts are financed. The banks handle boat paper over a five-year period. But they want at least twenty-five percent down. It’s just like automobiles. Practically everyone you see has got a loan on it.<
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  When I started in this business, right up through World War II, bankers were scared of anyone that was improvident enough to own a yacht and also need money. They felt like J. P. Morgan—if you had to question the cost of the yacht, you shouldn’t buy it. They thought a workingman had no right to buy it unless he could write a check for the full amount. But afterwards the banks solicited business. They have quite a bit of yacht paper now. There’s every price class, there’s a yacht. Some yachts go up to a million dollars, and you can buy a small sailboat for a couple hundred.

  These big ones are rare. There’s not too many people willing to splurge that kind of money on a yacht. When I first started out, the average wealthy man would buy a yacht, oh, seventy-five to one hundred, two hundred feet. There was a whole fleet of these yachts right on the Great Lakes. Some of them employed as high as sixteen men in a crew. After World War II and the tax situation, the 165-foot yachtsman owned a 52-foot yacht that could be run with one man instead of sixteen. Then they started putting yachts under corporations and charging them off. That kind of phased out when they were hounded by Internal Revenue.

  The 1970 recession was so bad that it cost me over four thousand dollars. I had to go into my own savings to carry me through the year. The first thing they can do without is a yacht. People stopped buying yachts six months before the ’70 crash. I guess they had inside information. I could tell it from the resistance to sales. You get along with a three-year-old automobile, you get along with a five-year-old yacht.