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…
I’ve had a pretty exhausting day for various reasons so I’m sticking to a smaller entry to kick of this section. There should be three sections in total and they will gain momentum in terms of length as we go on. The Making Phil Stallings (Spot-Welder) We start this section of Book Four with two…
Here we have an interesting mixture of jobs: a private investigator, a photographer and a film critic. What’s notable about this section is that despite however much you might think a photographer and a film critic may have to say, it’s the PI who spends around ten pages talking about his job, not the critic or…
Oh boy. This is going to be quite an entry. We’ve got two interviews with police officers. So that’s going to be a thing. But first, something a little more laid back. Fritz Ritter (Doorman) The doorman as an occupation is (surprisingly enough) still alive. I still see doormen (usually not women) in the front…