Working

by Studs Terkel

  We started out real strict. We’d sell only what we make. Otherwise, we were middlemen, profiting off somebody else’s labor. But now we’re selling ingredients too, because there’s no other store around that has them available. We sell honey, oil, flour, nuts. We buy honey in sixty-pound tins, and we’re able to sell real dark good honey for about twenty cents less than the big supermarkets.

  Our customers have to bring their own bottles and bags. We don’t have any bags around at all. We figure any penny we save here is passed on to the customers one way or the other. I don’t see how we’ll ever make a profit because of the nature of what we’re doing. There’s a limit to how many loaves of bread one person could make. As there’s a demand for more bread, there have to be more people here. We never have any money left over. We had thirty-five hundred dollars in loans. We put twenty-five dollars a week away toward the loan. We’ve paid back a thousand dollars already.

  But we’re growing in other ways. We’re looking for ways to get our product to people cheaper without resorting to machinery. One way is to get the ingredients cheaper—without sacrificing quality. Right now, there’s only one distributor of organically grown grain in bulk in the entire Midwest. He gets all his grain from Texas. There’s an exhorbitant shipping charge passed on to us. Furthermore, we don’t know that these grains are really organically grown. So we’ve purchased a mill. It’s going to make big changes here.

  We’ll grind our own grain. We’ll be able to buy organically grown grain right here in the Midwest. Buying right from the farm, it’s going to be maybe a third or fourth of the price. We’ll be able to go to the farm and see for ourselves. If there’s not one weed growing between these rows of wheat, you know they use chemicals. Even our customers will go to these farms and see for themselves.

  We use about a thousand pounds of wheat a week. We can say to the farmers, “Stop using this chemical and we’ll buy your whole field.” His neighboring farmers will see that he can sell this for a profit and maybe they’ll catch on too. People can do anything. (Laughs.) It’s such a good feeling. Somebody’ll come in and say, “Your bread is delicious.” It’s like your making dinner in your own house and giving it to someone. People come in like guests. They have an idea and we might take their advice. One man, who had been to a baking school, worked here three months. He enjoyed it a lot. At first he was horrified by what we were doing. We don’t measure flour and he couldn’t believe it. Our bread rises at different rates every day, depending on the temperature. We don’t have automatic rising things. He taught us a lot. He taught us how to shape loaves better, in a more efficient manner.

  We taught him a lot too. He found out you don’t have to measure the whole wheat flour. You can tell by the feel of it when the bread is done and you have enough flour. It also gives you more satisfaction than just doing it machinelike. You’re putting more of yourself into it somehow.

  We try to have a compromise between doing things efficiently and doing things in a human way. Our bread has to taste the same way every day, but you don’t have to be machines. On a good day it’s beautiful to be here. We have a good time and work hard and we’re laughing. It’s a good day if we don’t make too many mistakes and have a good time. I think a person can work as hard as he’s capable, not only for others but for his own satisfaction.

  In the beginning our turnover was huge. It’s slowing down now. I noticed as I was doing this tax thing at the end of the year, we’ve had only eleven people here the last three months, which is beautiful. That means only three people have left. In our first three months we had eighteen people. (Laughs.) The work was unbearably hard at the beginning. As we’ve learned more, our work has gotten easier. So there’s a big feeling of accomplishment.

  I get the same money as the others. I don’t think that’s the important issue. The decisions have been mainly mine, but this is getting to be less and less. Originally all the ideas were mine. But I’d taken them from other people. Now we have meetings, whenever anyone thinks we need one. Several times people have disagreed with me, and we did it the way the majority felt.

  I believe people will survive if we depend on ourselves and each other. If we’re working with our hands instead of with machines, we’re dealing with concrete things, personal, rather than abstract things, impersonal. Unless we do something like this, I don’t see this world lasting. So I really have no future to save money for. (Laughs.) I don’t know what this bread shop is gonna mean in a year or two or so. I’d say times are worse for this planet than they’ve ever been, so each tries to be the best he can, she can. I am doing exactly what I want to do.

  Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your identity. It tells you who you are. It’s gotten so abstract. People don’t work for the sake of working. They’re working for a car, a new house, or a vacation. It’s not the work itself that’s important to them. There’s such a joy in doing work well.

  When people ask what you do, what do you say?

  I make bread. (Laughs.)

  POSTSCRIPT: A drunk, who had obviously had a hard day’s night, enters. There is a soft discussion. She hands him a loaf. He leaves. “He asked me for a quarter. I gave him one this morning. Now he said he’s still hungry. So I offered him bread. He said, ‘If you don’t give the quarter, I’m not gonna take the bread.’ So I said, ‘Okay, don’t.’ He took the bread.”

  CATHLEEN MORAN

  She is nineteen years old.

  What is your work?

  Makin’ beds and bed pans and rotten stuff like that.

  What are you called?

  Nurse’s aide, dumb aide.

  Presently she is working at a middle-class hospital. It’s her third. Her previous jobs were lower-middle-class and upper-middle-class institutions. She has been at it since she was fifteen.

  I really don’t know if I mind the work as much as you always have to work with people, and that drives me nuts. I don’t mind emptying the bed pan, what’s in it, blood, none of that bothers me at all. Dealing with people is what I don’t like. It just makes everything else blah.

  How often do you work?

  As least as possible. Two days on a weekend, just to get me through school, like money for books and stuff. We start to work at seven, but I get up as late as possible, get everything on and run out the door. I ride my bike to work. I usually have someone punch me in, ’cause I’m never on time. You’re gonna think I’m nuts, but I do my work well. If I come a quarter after seven, they’re surprised. They don’t mind, because I get my work done before the allotted time. I won’t have anybody saying I did something lousy. I don’t know why.

  We get on the floor and you have to take thermometers and temperatures or you have to weigh people or pass water, and you go in the rooms, and they yell when you get ‘em up so early in the morning. Then they don’t want to get out of bed when you weigh ’em. They complain, “How come the water wasn’t passed earlier?” “We couldn’t sleep all night with the noise.” Or else you’ll walk in the room and you’ll say, “Hello,” and they’ll say, “Good morning, how are you?” So I’ll say “Fine,” and some of ‘em will say, “Well, gee, you’re the one that’s s’posed to be asking me that.” They don’t even give you a chance.

  I really wonder why I do have such a rotten attitude towards people. I could care less about ‘em. I’ll do my work, like, you know, good, I’ll give’em the best care, but I couldn’t care less about ’em. As far as meeting their emotional needs, forget it. That’s why (a little laugh) I don’t think I should go into nursing.

  I work on a floor that’s geriatric. Old people and psychiatric, so there’s never anyone in their right minds. They’re out of it or they’re confused. After you pass out trays, and there’s rarely a tray that has everything on it, they start hollering, “I didn’t get two sugars,” and then you spend half the time running to all the rooms gettin’ all their stuff. Then you have to feed all of them, and half the patients are out of it and they spit stuff at you and they
throw their food. They throw their dishes on the wall and floor. And I hate feeding patients that are always coughing. They cough right at ya. (Laughs.) That I don’t mind, cleaning stuff up. It’s just that you’re s’posed to calm ‘em down and talk to ’em, forget it. I won’t be bothered.

  I used to work in a hospital, it was more of a cancer ward. Young women, men. I got along great with the men, they could care less. But I always hated working with the women. They drive you nuts. I really can’t sympathize with ‘em unless sometimes, rarely, I think, What if I was in their place? Like the younger girls, they want you to feel sorry for them. I just can’t feel that. Some of ’em are okay, but they’re always crying. That doesn’t depress me. I have no feelings at all. A lot of nurses come in and they sit with the patients and they talk with ’em. Forget it.

  A patient will be in pain and they’ll be crying. They put the nurse’s light on and want to talk and stuff. I really don’t care. It’s rotten, you know? Lots of times I try to think as to why I have this attitude. I really think it was from my background in boarding school.

  “Living in a dorm with kids all the time, you didn’t have to be accepted, but you always had to be on top—or else you’d be pushed around and all that. At Maryville I never really was close with anybody. Couldn’t afford to be or else you got hurt. So I just turned everybody off. I just kept to myself. I was there from when I was just three until I was sixteen.

  “There were kids whose parents had money, but they didn’t want ‘em for some reason. When we first went out to high school, everybody started calling us orphans. I couldn’t understand that, because they had money, they had clothes, they had parents to come to see ’em. But there were a few who didn’t have parents.

  “My mother, she makes about six thousand dollars a year. She really couldn’t afford to take care of me at home. When I was born my dad took off. He was an alcoholic. My mother was also an alcoholic. I was raised in Maryville from loneliness and stuff. My mother always came to see me, no matter what the weather was.

  “In the eighth grade you had to get stupid to survive, no kiddin’. I wouldn’t let anybody push me around. I have people tell me I have a chip on my shoulder or I’m sensitive if someone barks at me. I could see how girls were pushed around, socked and stuff. But I was good in sports, I came to be the best swimmer, basketball, and I was looked up to. So I could afford to be on my own and left alone. They were allowing us to go out and get jobs. When you get out, you’re not worth nothing.”

  She worked for several months at a hospital “which was really a dump. It was mostly black and low-income whites, though there were a number of patients from middle-income high rises nearby. I really couldn’t understand it, after Holy Family. I thought that was a typical hospital—it was spotless. When I saw this one, it was filthy, with bugs on the food cart, I thought, ‘Oh God.’ I only stayed there for two months.

  “I used to have to be forced to get out of bed in the morning and go there. I’d rarely work a weekend when I was supposed to. (Laughs.) Which isn’t me. That’s why I said I gotta get outa here, because it was getting to me, and that’s goofy. They never had any sheets. They never had anything the patient needs. Like they were paying so much money for a room. I’m not lying, don’t think I’m nuts. There wasn’t a morning when we had linen before ten, eleven ’. The patients, they’re awakened at seven. We never had adequate help and the other aides, they didn’t really fulfill the patient’s needs. I was about the only white aide in the hospital and they were wondering what I was doing there.”

  I have a hard time dealing with black patients, because they’re really sensitive. You’re gonna think I’m rotten, but when I go into a room I don’t have a great attitude. I’m not blah, but if I don’t feel like talking, I don’t talk. I’ll give ’em a bath, but I’m not making up a bunch of conversation just to make them feel good.

  It happened just last week. I was in a room with a black patient and she had her hair set in rollers, and she looked like about twenty something. I couldn’t see her hair, whether it was graying. She happened to be forty-one. I asked her what she was in for and she said arthritis. I said, “God, you look like about twenty-something.” She felt great. She said, “Gee, thanks.” I said, “I really can’t tell a black’s age, they always seem so much younger.” If you call ‘em colored they have a fit. If you call ’em black, they’ll have a fit. So you don’t call ‘em. So she got so upset. “Why are blacks so different? You mean you can’t tell a white person’s age?” They just don’t show it, not as much, in my opinion. Oh, she started yellin’. I was patient with her.

  I think blacks demand more attention—like little piddley stuff she could reach for, she wanted me to get her. I mean, they’re going to take advantage of being waited on like whites. Because she’s black, she’ll get white service, too.

  I’m not prejudiced really, but they all put their money under their pillows, while the whites put it in a drawer. I was making her bed, so I turned her on the side and I put her purse on the window. I walked out of her room and I heard her saying, “That white bitch stole my purse!” She was really yelling. I looked on the window and it was right in front of her. And then she said, “Well, stay here, you probably stole something out of it anyway.” I was going to walk out of the room and she said, “Hey, white girl, can you come back and fix the blankets up a little neater?” They were really perfect. By that time, you felt like kickin’ her right in the mouth. Rarely do I put up with it. I just say, “Do you want your bed made? Get somebody else.”

  Like I was going to give a black person a bath and I was too lazy to walk and get some soap way down in the utility room, so I got the soap that was in the bathroom. So she said to me, “What do you think I am, a dog? That I’m going to use that soap that white hands have washed their hands on.” So I told her it was a fairly new bar and I said, “What does color got to do with the bar of soap?” She went on and on, so I told her I wasn’t going to give her a bath, because sometimes you can’t do anything right for ’em.

  White patients are just as bad. But the blacks always bring up their color. The whites are just a pain in the neck too. Blacks are more offensive, but whites nag you more about the stuff they don’t get.

  When I first started at Holy Family, I really couldn’t stand it, ’cause I really didn’t want the job. I was just doing it to get out of Maryville for a couple of hours. When I got on the floor,I didn’t know beans. I was dumb. You may think I’m nuts, but I really feel myself capable in whatever I do. So I learned what was up fast, and went out of my way to do extra stuff, to take care of blood pressures and bandages and stuff, so I’d be left alone so I could do my work. I wouldn’t have anybody on my back checking me. If they wanted something done, they could get it done, you know? I was real good friends with the nurses and aides, I liked it.

  You always get a nurse, you wonder what she’s doing there. They’re blah, bad news, crabby, they try to push you around—which is how I’m afraid I’m going to turn out. Most nurses, they sit at the desk. They chart and take care of the medications. As far as patient contact, they don’t get any at all. It’s the aides, you know? The nurses don’t do anything except give a shot. The head nurse is at the desk constantly, with the doctor’s orders, so the aides get all the contact. That’s why I figure if I’m going into nursing, I won’t have any contact with the patients anyway.

  I’d go nuts. I’m just doing it because it’s a good job and if times ever become like the Depression, they always need nurses. I’d still like to get a master’s, go into law school or something. Everybody thinks I’m nuts: “What are you going to nursing school for if you hate it?” Because I can do my work well and I can put up with it, even if it drives me nuts.

  You either get patients who don’t want a bath at all and then report you for not giving them a bath, or patients who fake near bath time that they have chest pains so you’ll give them a bath, and the next minute you see them walking around the hall and they’re visit
ing.

  With orthopedics, with the geriatric, it’s really discouraging. The nursing homes have given them terrible care and they have sores you wouldn’t believe—bones, tendons, everything showing. I change the dressings and soak them and try to position them where they’re not on a sore. But anywhere you put them they’re on a sore. You feel like they’re aching.

  Lots of times they get bladder infections. You’ll just make a bed and they’ll urinate right on the clean side. You’ll have to, okay, man, start again. You turn them over on the clean side and then they’ll have a BM. Sometimes this goes on four or five times. You have to make a patient’s bed at least three or four times a day to do good work. It takes about four hours to get all the patients really clean. By the time you’re done, you feel so good. But a nurse comes up and says, “So-and-so needs their bed changed, they crapped all over.” It really gets discouraging. Each time you go in that room you want to kill them.

  I get done at three-thirty. But lots of times it’s three-thirty and someone falls out of bed or pulls out their IVs or you know . . . Well, I’ll stay. But a lot of kids cut out at even a quarter to three. I usually punch them out,’cause they’re good about it in the morning.

  She straightens out a cushion behind me. “Uh . . . do you want to lean back, so you can get more comfortable?” “You’re talking like a nurse’s aide interested in the patient.” “I forgot what we were talking about.”

  If you ever hear someone crying out in pain . . . ?