For a few reasons or more this section of part 3 is going to be a little challenging for me. The main problem being that the first two people I’m going to highlight from Terkel’s interviews are actually happy with their jobs. And these aren’t jobs you would usually associate with being happy either. So…
There’s a lot of variety in this section of book five. There so much in fact that I’ve had to split it up into two different sections. It certainly helps that some of the interviews are short and to the point. So Terkel ends up getting around 4 interviews in about 15 pages which is…
We’ll be going a little short today with only two entries to cover but them’s the breaks of this chapter. Counting isn’t a particularly in depth look at the world of financial jobs at 10 pages, but maybe Terkel just finds math as boring as I do. Still, there’s definitely some winning equations in this…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A dentist, a hotel clerk, a bar pianist an elevator starter and a janitor (also ex-salesman) walk into a chapter of Working. What, never heard that classic joke? Neither have I. Dr. Stephen Bartlett (Dentist) First we start with the dentist who got a late start (28…
As I sit cross-legged with my brutally unkempt hair reaching past my shoulders I’m completely aware of the situational irony that I am about to criticize folks who work in beauty. I’m not exactly the kind of person who will ever be put on a magazine, I’m one of the last people to think about…
The Parking This time we have a twofer and are tackling two different sections of Book Four. The trick here is that part 3 and part 4 combined are only 10 pages long. I thought about, for a moment, just doing it one part at a time. But I don’t wanna space things up that…
Well, you don’t always need many interviews to finish off a chapter. Sometimes you just need one. A long one. Frank Decker is your guy for that sort of thing. Frank Decker (Interstate Truckdriver) So this time Terkel has it as “truckdriver” but my web browser disagrees this is a word. It’s a nice(?) middle…
The Driving Booker Page (Cabdriver) Well, I hope you like hearing about the sea, because Page talks more about that instead of what his job is like. But don’t worry, the next interviewee will make up for it as they are also a cabdriver. Come to think of it, it originally surprised me that Terkel…
This time we’ve got a general foreman and a president of United Automobile Workers in Lordstown, Ohio. This is gonna be good. Wheeler Stanley (General Foreman) Stanley (no, not that one) is your stereotypical working man who loves his company and wants to do right by it. It doesn’t matter whether he disagrees or his…
Last week we started from the bottom and now we’re…here? This continuation of The Demon Lover (referring to those who work with cars) is more focused on the middle and upper echelon of the Ford factory we saw in the last part. Whereas Phil Stallings the spot-welder wanted to be a utility worker, this time…