The Guilded Sweatshop (cont.)

"The occupation molds your personality. Publicity does that to people too. Calling an editor on the phone, asking favors, can be humiliating. … Being a publicity man is a confession of a weakness. It's for people who don't have the guts to get attention for themselves. You spend your whole life telling the world how great somebody else is. This is frustrating." - Eddie Jaffe-"Press Agent" (Publicist). 23

"A lot of people are considered failures, but its not their fault. I don't know exactly what I want to do. I don't want to go back in the rat race. Will it be the same thing again? I've had offers to go back into sales-to be a con artist. But I've gotten turned off. I think I missed the boat. If I could do it all over again, I would have gone into the field of mental health, really finding out what makes people tick. I would love to find out why people think it's important to be a success."-Tim Devlin, ex-salesman. 24

"The last place I worked for, I was let go. I told the people I worked with, 'If anybody asks, tell them I got fired and give them my phone number.' One of my friends stopped by and asked where I was. They said, 'She's no longer with us.' That's all. I vanished….I was very open about being different…..I think the bank did not care for that too much. They want everything to be pretty much the same, kind of conservative, fitting into the norm. I think that's the real reason why they let me go. I think a lot of places don't want people to be people. I think they want you to be almost be the machines they are working with."-Nancy Rogers, bank teller. 25

"The American Dream (laughs). That beautiful, ugly, vicious dream that we all, in some way, have. I wanted to be a key man in the industry. Over the years, I realized there isn't any key man-that every man, ever human is a commodity to be exploited. And destroyed and cast aside. For thirty years, I have been a commercial hack."- Walter Lundquist, commercial artist. 26

"Serving in Florida": "On my first meeting at Hearthside, there is a "mandatory meeting for all restaurant employees," which I attend, eager for insight into our overall marketing strategy and the niche (your basic Ohio cuisine with a tropical twist?) we aim to inhabit. But there is no "we" at this meeting. Phillip, our top manager except for an occasional "consultant" sent out by the corporate headquarters, opens it with a sneer: "The break room-it's disgusting. Butts in the ashtrays, newspapers lying around, crumbs." This windowless little room, which also houses the time clock for the entire hotel, is where we stash our bags and civilian clothes and take our half hour meal breaks. But a break room is not a right, he tells us, it can be taken away. We should also know that the lockers in the break room and whatever is in them can be searched at any time. Then comes the gossip; there has been gossip; gossip (which seems to mean employees talking amongst themselves) must stop. " 27

Scrubbing in Maine: "What these (personality) tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the "right" answers should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision-making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders. At "The Maids," a housecleaning service, I am given something called the "Accutrac personality test," which warns at the beginning that "Accutrac has multiple measures which detect attempts to distort or 'psych out' the questionnaire." …. The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information being conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us. We don't just want your muscles and that portion of your brain that is directly connected to them, we want your innermost self. 28

23-26-- "Working," Studs Terkel, Pantheon Books/Random House, 1972-1974.
27-28 -- 'Nickel and Dimed,' Barbara Ehrenreich, Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company),2001

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