learn he was a mere vice president, one of a score.
My fellow toilers were white-collar workers, a collection of meek men and dolled up young women, the latter mostly from poor towns in New Jersey, where bathtubs, it would seem, were in short supply. They took the ferry every morning to metropolitan New York, to the city of golden opportunity, not so much to get to work on time as in the hope of fitting into Cinderella’s glass slipper, or at least winning a fur coat from the boss for favors granted. On hot summer days, for all their good looks, they reeked of sweat. It broke my heart that women with such pretty faces and such tiny, dancing feet should emit these pungent smells, as if nature had bestowed rank odors on beautiful little female animals in order to repel predatory males.
One seductively sunny day, I looked for an excuse to say goodbye forever to the dusty documents accumulating on my desk. The opportunity came with a “fatherly” note from a supervisor, reminding me of all the duties I had neglected. He warned that unless I completed these duties I would be ineligible for promotion to higher positions in the company. I replied with a rude note in kind—for that’s how business was conducted at American Surety, in the grand manner, with an exchange of memoranda between subordinates and supervisors and vice versa. The superintendent lost no time in sending for me and demanding my resignation, in just those words. Given the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars a month that I was pulling down (to say nothing of the vague opportunity to “work my way up,” in the good, old-fashioned American way), the demand that I resign had such an official ring to it that I complied and strode right out of the superintendent’s office with head held high.
My white-collar comrades with their finely tuned antennas promptly got wind of my revolt. These colleagues, purportedly buddies, buried their heads deeper in their documents lest, God forbid, their bidding me farewell be taken as a sign that they identified themselves with my insurgency. The only one with the courage to say goodbye was a Scotsman, whose vocabulary featured an all-purpose word, “horseshit!”—an exclamation he employed, with varying intonations adapted to the occasion, to signify both approval and displeasure, equal verdict on the rotten eggs that were served up at Child’s restaurant and on the pretty, friendly waitress who had brought them. He ran after me, pressed my hand warmly, and uttered his trademark expression, a “horseshit!” so deep-felt, filled with such sorrow and regret, that—loosely translated—it seemed to say: “Don’t take it to heart, my friend, because it’s all vanity of vanities,
vanitas vanitatis.
You’ll certainly find another job.” The one magic word conveyed all that, and more.
It was midsummer. To reach the exit, I had to walk past the desks of a whole row of female workers. The scent of their makeup, simmering in perspiration, followed me out the door.
When I was a university student, I worked for a union local. At that job I never saw the “big boss” either. To be sure, I had a supervisor, but I felt that my true employer was the working class, even though it didn’t exactly keep me in clover. For ten dollars a week, my job was to stand behind a grille, facing a clutch of resentful workers who had just put in a week of hard labor and now had to suffer the further indignity of lining up to pay their union dues. The dues payers would often let their anger out at me and scream across the grille that I was draining their blood, gorging on the fruit of their toil, and sucking the marrow from their bones. The job ended when my supervisor sent me to buy a few bottles of whiskey for a little banquet the labor leaders were throwing in their own honor. Inasmuch I was given no money, only instructions to go to a nearby saloon and charge the purchase to the union’s credit, I persuaded myself en route that, as a
My fellow toilers were white-collar workers, a collection of meek men and dolled up young women, the latter mostly from poor towns in New Jersey, where bathtubs, it would seem, were in short supply. They took the ferry every morning to metropolitan New York, to the city of golden opportunity, not so much to get to work on time as in the hope of fitting into Cinderella’s glass slipper, or at least winning a fur coat from the boss for favors granted. On hot summer days, for all their good looks, they reeked of sweat. It broke my heart that women with such pretty faces and such tiny, dancing feet should emit these pungent smells, as if nature had bestowed rank odors on beautiful little female animals in order to repel predatory males.
One seductively sunny day, I looked for an excuse to say goodbye forever to the dusty documents accumulating on my desk. The opportunity came with a “fatherly” note from a supervisor, reminding me of all the duties I had neglected. He warned that unless I completed these duties I would be ineligible for promotion to higher positions in the company. I replied with a rude note in kind—for that’s how business was conducted at American Surety, in the grand manner, with an exchange of memoranda between subordinates and supervisors and vice versa. The superintendent lost no time in sending for me and demanding my resignation, in just those words. Given the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars a month that I was pulling down (to say nothing of the vague opportunity to “work my way up,” in the good, old-fashioned American way), the demand that I resign had such an official ring to it that I complied and strode right out of the superintendent’s office with head held high.
My white-collar comrades with their finely tuned antennas promptly got wind of my revolt. These colleagues, purportedly buddies, buried their heads deeper in their documents lest, God forbid, their bidding me farewell be taken as a sign that they identified themselves with my insurgency. The only one with the courage to say goodbye was a Scotsman, whose vocabulary featured an all-purpose word, “horseshit!”—an exclamation he employed, with varying intonations adapted to the occasion, to signify both approval and displeasure, equal verdict on the rotten eggs that were served up at Child’s restaurant and on the pretty, friendly waitress who had brought them. He ran after me, pressed my hand warmly, and uttered his trademark expression, a “horseshit!” so deep-felt, filled with such sorrow and regret, that—loosely translated—it seemed to say: “Don’t take it to heart, my friend, because it’s all vanity of vanities,
vanitas vanitatis.
You’ll certainly find another job.” The one magic word conveyed all that, and more.
It was midsummer. To reach the exit, I had to walk past the desks of a whole row of female workers. The scent of their makeup, simmering in perspiration, followed me out the door.
When I was a university student, I worked for a union local. At that job I never saw the “big boss” either. To be sure, I had a supervisor, but I felt that my true employer was the working class, even though it didn’t exactly keep me in clover. For ten dollars a week, my job was to stand behind a grille, facing a clutch of resentful workers who had just put in a week of hard labor and now had to suffer the further indignity of lining up to pay their union dues. The dues payers would often let their anger out at me and scream across the grille that I was draining their blood, gorging on the fruit of their toil, and sucking the marrow from their bones. The job ended when my supervisor sent me to buy a few bottles of whiskey for a little banquet the labor leaders were throwing in their own honor. Inasmuch I was given no money, only instructions to go to a nearby saloon and charge the purchase to the union’s credit, I persuaded myself en route that, as a
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