Working

by Studs Terkel

  “I won the job as a Detroit radio announcer at thirty-five dollars a week, while still a student. I hitchhiked or took a bus every day from Ann Arbor to Detroit. On the campus I was promotion manager of the yearbook. I was sports and feature writer for the Michigan Daily. I was on the freshman football team, baseball team, and basketball team. And I was president of the fraternity. All at one time. Shows you can do it if you work hard enough.

  “When I applied for admission at the university, I was asked what my goal was after graduation. I said, ‘The announcing staff of WGN.’ I finished my last exam June 8, 1941, and I started at WGN the next day.”

  I had no desire to be an announcer forever. I wanted to become general manager. I think this is something anybody can do. The number one thing in any business is to go get a background, so you can show your people you can do anything they can do. My people today know I can announce any show they could, I can write a script, I can produce a show, I can handle a camera. If I still had the voice, I would enjoy being back on the air again.

  I’ve had to develop a team effort with all people. I prefer being called Ward rather than Mr. Quaal. Ninety percent of the people do call me by my first name. The young women of the organization do not, although I certainly would not disapprove of them calling me Ward. The last thing I want to be is a stuffed shirt. I’m trying to run this organization on a family basis. I prefer it to be on the informal side.

  I’ve always felt throughout my lifetime that if you have any ability at all, go for first place. That’s all I’m interested in. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to be an autocrat. Lord knows I’m not a dictator. I try to give all my colleagues total autonomy. But they know there’s one guy in charge.

  Of course, you have to be number two before you become number one —unless you’re born into something. I was born into a poor family. I had to create my own paths. Sure, I’ve been second vice president, first vice president, and executive vice president. But I had only one goal in life and that was to be president.

  A fellow like Ward Quaal, he’s one of the old hands now. That doesn’t mean I’m going to vegetate. I intend to devote more time to our subsidiaries and to develop young people who come forth with new ideas. I don’t look forward to retirement. I feel I have many useful years ahead of me. When the time comes to step aside, I won’t regret it at all. I have a lot of writing to do. I’ll have so much to do.

  You’re more of a philosopher-king than a boss . . .

  I think that is true. When I came here sixteen years ago, August first, I never had any desire to be a czar. I don’t like to say I ruled with an iron hand, but I had to take charge and clean up the place. I am the captain calling the signals and every once in a while I call the right play and we’re pretty lucky.

  I don’t feel any pressure, though my family says I sometimes show it. I’m not under tension. I go to bed at night and I sleep well. The company is doing well. My people are functioning as a team. The success story is not Ward Quaal. It’s a great team of people.

  POSTSCRIPT: “On a typical day we get about seven hundred phone calls. We average eighty a day long distance.” I estimated that during the time of this conversation, there were about forty phone calls for Ward Quaal.

  DAVE BENDER

  It is a newly built, quite modern factory on the outskirts of a large industrial city. Scores of people are at work in the offices. Sounds of typewriters and adding machines; yet an air of informality pervades. He has come into his private office, tie askew; he’s in need of a shave. We have a couple of shots of whisky.

  “I manufacture coin machine and vending machine parts—components. We also make units for amusement devices. We don’t know what they’re gonna do with it. We have ideas what they might. I have about two hundred employees. I never counted. They’re people. We have tool and die makers, mold makers, sheet metal, screw machine, woodwork, painting, coil winding. You name it, we got it.”

  I just stay in the background. Myself, I like making things. I make the machinery here. I’m not an engineer, but I have an idea and I kind of develop things and—(with an air of wonder)—they work. All night long I think about this place. I love my work. It isn’t the money. It’s just a way of expressing my feeling.

  When we started here we were strictly in the pinball game part business. I kept adding and adding and adding and never stopped. Finally I got into the jukebox end of it. Of course, slot machines came in and then slot machines went out. Never fool with Uncle Sam. When they said no slot machine parts, they meant it and I meant it too. I don’t want them checking up on us. You can live without it. We make so many different things. A little of this, a little of that. Not a lot of any one thing.

  I made a machine that makes plastic tubes. It becomes like a parasite. It runs through 250 feet a minute, five tubes at a time. I made it with a bunch of crazy ideas and junk I found around the place. I can sell that machine for twenty thousand dollars. If I dress it up and put flowers on it, you can sell it for much, much more.

  I was a no-good bum, kicked out of high school. I went up to a teacher and I said, “If you don’t pass me, I’ll blow your brains out.” I stole a gun. (Laughs.) I was kicked out. It was my second year. I did some dirty things I can’t talk about. (Laughs.) When I was thirteen years old I took a Model T Ford apart and put it together again in the basement. I did some crazy things.

  When I talk to people about plastic I take the position I’m the plastic and how would I travel through the machine and what would I see. Maybe I’m goofy. In business I take the position: where would I be if I were the customer? What do I expect of you? Some people are natural born stinkers. I try to find a way to get to them. You can break down anybody with the right method.

  I sell all I make. I don’t know what to do with ‘em. (Laughs.) They use ‘em for packaging. I work with wood, plastic, metal, anything. I work with paper. Even at home. Sunday I was taking paper and pasting it together and finding a method of how to drop spoons, a fork, a napkin, and a straw into one package. The napkin feeder I got. The straw feeder we made already. That leaves us the spoon and the fork. How do we get it? Do we blow the bag open? Do we push it open? Do we squeeze it down? So I’m shoving things in and pushing with my wife’s hair clips and bobby pins and everything I can get my hands on. I even took the cat’s litter, the stuff you pick up the crap with (laughs), even that to shove with the bag, to pull it open. This is for schools, inexpensive packaging. It sells for about a penny a package. Plastic. In a bag, the whole darn thing. So what can I tell you?

  Everybody is packaging the stuff. Their method is antique. My method is totally automatic. I know what my competitors are doing. I never underestimate ‘em, but I’m ten steps ahead of ’em. I can meet them any way they want. But not to cut their heart out. We all have to make a living.

  “I started this whole damn thing with forty dollars. In 1940. I borrowed it. In 1938 I was a big dealer. I was the greatest crap shooter in the world. (Laughs.) I was makin’ rubber parts and plunger rods for the pin games. Then the war broke out in ’41. Where do you get the rods? I took a hacksaw and went to the junkyards. Remember the old rails that went up and down on the beds? I cut that out and made plunger rods. I did some crazy things.

  “I started with a couple of people. I made fifteen dollars a week for myself and I didn’t even have that. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I tried everything. Making work gloves. I was eighteen, I went into the coal business. I borrowed two hundred dollars from my brother. Suddenly I had four trucks. I got sick and tired of coal and gave my father the keys for the four trucks and I said, ‘Pa, it’s your business. You owe me zero.’ What else did I do? Oh God, making things. Making a factory. I love making.

  “Business to me is a method of engineering. Even in advertising. I’ve always wondered why they don’t get people for what they really are. Like this Alka-Seltzer commercial. I operate business the same way—in getting to the people. What are we other than people?”

  Even during the wa
r, I never took advantage of a price. I used to sell something for thirty-five cents. During the war I still sold it for thirty-five cents. A customer said, “Dave, I’ll never forget you.” They’re liars. They did forget soon afterward. I never took anybody. I built my business on that. My competitors came and they went and I’m still at it. I’m bigger now than ever.

  I hope to be going public. So I have to show an increase. That’s the name of the game. I have workers been here twenty-seven, twenty-eight years. I feel I owe them something. I don’t know how to compensate them. At least if I go public, I can offer them stock. I’d like to repay people. This is a way of saying thank you.

  I was offered all kinds of deals which I turned down—by big vending companies. It would be beautiful for me. I walk away with a million many times over. So what? What about these poor devils? I’ll fire ’em all? Huh?

  To them, I’m Dave. I know the family. I know their troubles. “Dave, can you give me a dollar?” “Dave, how about some coffee?” I’ll go to the model maker and talk about our problem and we’ll have a shot of whisky. Ask him how his wife’s feeling. “Fine.” He wants to put something for his home, can I make it? “Sure.” They all call me Dave. When they call me Mr. Bender I don’t know who they’re talking to. (Laughs.)

  I love mechanics. All my fingernails are chopped off. I washed my hands before you came in. Grease. Absolutely. I get into things. You stick a ruler here or a measure here. I want this, I want that. “Frank, you chop this up. Put this in the mill. Cut that off.” I got three, four things happening at one time.

  I’m here at six in the morning. Five thirty I’ll leave. Sometimes I’ll come here on Sunday when everybody’s gone and I’ll putter around with the equipment. There isn’t a machine in this place I can’t run. There isn’t a thing I can’t do.

  They tell me it don’t look nice for the workers for me to work on the machine. I couldn’t care less if I swept the floors, which I do. Yesterday some napkins fell on the floor from the napkin feeding machine. I said to the welder, “Pick up the napkins.” He says, “No, you pick it up.” I said, “If you’re tired, I’ll pick it up.” So I’m pickin’ ’em up.

  The workers say: “You’re the boss, you shouldn’t do this. It’s not nice. You’re supposed to tell us what to do, but not to do it yourself.” I tell ‘em I love it. They want me more or less in the office. I don’t even come in here. If I do it’s just to get my shot of booze with my worker and we break bread, that’s all. When they call me Mr. Bender, I think they’re being sarcastic. I don’t feel like a boss to ’em. I feel like a chum-buddy.

  I know a lot of people with money and I have very little to do with them. They’re a little bit too high falutin’ for me. I think they’re snobs. They’re spoiled rotten, their wealth. I won’t mention names. I was born and raised poor. I had zero. I’m a fortunate guy. Whatever I got I’m thankful for. That’s my life. I just like plain, ordinary people. I have a doctor friend, but outside of being a doctor, he’s my swear-buddy. We swear at each other. A guy who works in the liquor store is my friend. Some of the workers here are my friends.

  You’re the boss of these people . . .

  (Hurt) No, I just work here. They say, “Dave you should give us orders. You shouldn’t be pickin’ up napkins.” Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not the easiest guy in the world. I swear at ’em. I’m a stubborn son of a gun. When I finally get my idea straight, I’m rough. I know what I want, give me what I want. But I do have enough sense to know when to leave’em alone.

  Don’t you feel you have status in being a boss?

  Ooohhh, I hate that word! I tell people I don’t want to hear another word about who I am or what I am. I enjoy myself eleven hours a day. When I get home I take my shoes off, get comfortable, pinch my wife’s rear end, kiss her, of course, and ask her what she did today. I try not to take my problems home. I have problems, plenty, but I try to avoid it.

  Saturdays and Sundays are the worst days of the week. It’s a long weekend because I’m not here. I bum around, see movies, go to somebody’s house, but I’m always waiting for Monday. I go away on a vacation, it’s the worst thing in the world. (Laughs.) My wife got a heart attack in Majorca, Spain. She was in the hospital. I was there six weeks. It was the first real vacation I ever had. I finally went fishing. Here I am drinking wine, eating oranges and cheese, tearing the bread on the boat, had the time of my life. I told my wife it took her heart attack to get me to enjoy a vacation. (Laughs.)

  Retire? Hell no. I’d open up another shop and start all over again. What am I gonna do? Go crazy? I told you I love my work. I think it’s some form of being insecure. I’ve always worried about tomorrow. I worried and I fought for tomorrow. I don’t have to worry about tomorrow. But I still want to work. I need to.

  Today I worked all day in the shop with the model maker, two tool makers, and a welder. I don’t have neat blueprints. I don’t have a damn thing. All I have is this. (Taps at his temple.) I’ll take a piece of paper. I can’t even make drawings. I’m measuring, taking off three-eighths of an inch or put on two inches here. It’s the craziest piece of iron you ever saw. I never saw anything like this in my life. But I saw it working the other day.

  When I get it fabricated it’ll be a packaging machine. You’ll see arms going up and down, gears working, things going, reelers and winders, automatic everything. I know it could be patented. There’s nothing like it. It’s unique. This is all in my mind, yes sir. And I can’t tell you my telephone number. (Laughs.)

  I never tell people I’m the boss. I get red and flustered. I’m ashamed of it. When they find out—frankly speaking, people are parasites. They treat you like a dirty dog one way, and as soon as they find out who you are it’s a different person. (Laughs.) When they come through the front door—“I want you to meet our president, Mr. Bender”—they’re really like peacocks. I’d rather receive a man from the back door as a man. From the front door, he’s got all the table manners. Oh, all that phony air. He’s never down to earth. That’s why I don’t like to say who I am.

  A man comes in and I’m working like a worker, he tells me everything. He talks from the bottom of his heart. You can break bread with him, you can swear. Anything that comes out of your heart. The minute he finds out you’re in charge, he looks up to you. Actually he hates you.

  My wife’s got a friend and her husband’s got a job. If only they stopped climbing down my back. I do so many wrong things. Why don’t you tell me to go to hell for the things I do? I deliberately see how far I can push them. And they won’t tell me to go to hell, because I’m Dave Bender, the president. They look up to me as a man of distinction, a guy with brains. Actually I’m a stupid ass, as stupid as anybody that walks the street.

  Yet what the hell did we fight for? A goddamn empty on top of nothing? A sand pile? King of the Hill means you stood there and you fought to get on top of an empty hill. But it did satisfy your ego, didn’t it? We do these crazy things. It doesn’t have to be a financial reward. Just the satisfaction.

  I’m making a machine now. I do hope to have it ready in the next couple months. The machine has nothing to do with helping humanity in any size, shape, or form. It’s a personal satisfaction for me to see this piece of iron doing some work. It’s like a robot working. This is the reward itself for me, nothing else. My ego, that’s it.

  Something last night was buggin’ me. I took a sleeping pill to get it out of my mind. I was up half the night just bugging and bugging and bugging. I was down here about six o’clock this morning. I said, “Stop everything. We’re making a mistake.” I pointed out where the mistake was and they said, “Holy hell, we never thought of that.” Today we’re rebuilding the whole thing. This kind of stuff gets me. Not only what was wrong, but how the devil do you fix it? I felt better. This problem, that’s over with. There’s no problem that can’t be solved if you use logic and reason the thing out. I don’t care what it is. Good horse sense is what it’s known as. With that you can do anyth
ing you want—determination, you can conquer the world.

  ERNEST BRADSHAW

  “I work in a kind of bank, in the auditing department. I supervise about twenty people. We keep an eye on the other areas. We do a lot of paper checking to make sure nobody inside is stealing. It’s kind of internal security.” The company is a large one-about five thousand employees.

  He’s been at this job a year. He started there two and a half years ago as a clerk. “You always feel good about a promotion. It means more money and less work.” (Laughs.) He is twenty-five, married. His wife is a teacher. There are two blacks aside from himself in the department.

  You have control over people’s lives and livelihood. It’s good for a person who enjoys that kind of work, who can dominate somebody else’s life. I’m not too wrapped up in seeing a woman, fifty years old, get thrown off her job because she can’t cut it like the younger ones. They moved her off the job, where she was happy.

  Some people can manage and some people can’t manage. I figure I can manage. But it’s this personal feeling—it just doesn’t seem right for me to say to this woman, “Okay, I’ll rate you below average.” She has nobody to support her. If she got fired, where would a woman fifty years of age go to find a job? I’m a good supervisor. I write it up the way it’s supposed to be written up. My feeling can’t come into play. What I do is what I have to do. This doesn’t mean I won’t get gray hairs or feel kind of bad.