The Book Of Jobs
By Susan Faludi
In the introduction to Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Century, the editors explain that they modeled their collection of workers' oral histories (which began as a series on the Web site Word.com) on Studs Terkel's 1972 classic, Working. But, the editors hasten to add with the emphatic apoliticism so de rigueur in New Media circles, they have most certainly not followed Terkel's "tendentious" ideological approach. They proudly assert they will offer no analysis of the modern conditions of work. "The title reflects what we see as today's somewhat more casual, transitory, cynical and yet playful work zeitgeist, compared to 1972," they aver. "But besides that one touch, the editors of this book have nothing in particular to say about 'work in contemporary American society.' "
As it happens, though, their subjects have plenty to say on the topic, much of it unapologetically political, and little of it "casual" or "playful." Over and over, whether from the computer programmer, the record executive, or the Kinko's saleswoman, we are offered keen, disturbing, and deeply felt analyses of the franchised-out, contracted-out, downsized, temporary-staffed, branded, image-before-product modern workplace. Judging from the scores of workers who weigh in with eloquence, anger, and passion in these pages, American workers are greatly troubled by the new work zeitgeist, and have given it a lot more serious thought than the average media pundit glibly recounting the glories of the stock-market-fueled economic "boom."
Unintentionally or not, the stories in Gig deliver a more rousing political wallop than those in Working. The denizens of Working were often limping along, broken, resigned, still wanting to be seen as good sports, dutiful examples of the mechanized worker, not, typically, ready to smash the machine. The employees in Gig, by contrast, often come across as stinging and disgusted observers of their own condition; if they are cynical, it is a cynicism that seems born of the desire to take a stand in a time when no obvious political mechanism exists to mount a meaningful challenge. They are workers trying, individually, in isolation, desperately, to figure it all out. "Isn't that just fucked up?" the distressed Hallmark gift shop saleswoman says of the corporatization of her field, a line that could easily be the collection's anthem. It is one indication of the workers' distress—and their courage—that they are willing to speak with such candor on the record. Unlike in Working, these storytellers, with only a few exceptions, use their real names.
Biting commentary on the New Economy and the harsh conditions it has inflicted come from all quarters. Chris Real, the temp, caustically sums up the reasons for his occupation's runaway growth. "All the money on Wall Street that they're pushing back and forth comes from people like me paying our own dental bills." Steelworker Denise Barber points out: "The company, when they have to cut, they cut workers. We're easiest. And what happens to their stock if they lay a bunch of us off? It jumps. It's the only thing this country is looking out for—the stock market." Alex Cho, a hat seller for an independent haberdashery, observes wryly: "Every other shop I see is going out of business. The only ones doing well are the big chains. I went to Pottery Barn last week and bought a lamp for twenty-nine dollars. How can I compete with that? I can't. Whether or not people accept it, they like to be clones. Face it, every single one of us is dressed head-to-toes in Gap."
It's not just the old-timers, the factory workers and the independent retailers, who are inflamed by the new economic blueprint. If anything, the most unhappy voices in Gig come from the thriving glam end of the contemporary workplace—from Wall Street, the entertainment industry, the Internet, casinos, marketing, the media.
A corporate securities lawyer describes an "insane" never-ending work life where he's bombarded with work e-mails at 1 a.m., and where cursing clients reach him by cell phone while he's attending the birth of his baby and are outraged when he asks to call them back. "I'm not a happy guy," he says with dry understatement. "The only thing I really feel like I totally enjoy at this point in my life is running." The ad executive is no happier. "I'm, like, telling people to go fuck themselves on a daily basis," he says. "And that's because being in this job, you realize that money is the bottom line in almost everything." A Boston Globe reporter is revolted by the Monicagate scandalmongering that he was plunged into as a member of the Washington press corps: "That wasn't the type of reporting that I wanted to spend my life doing. I mean every day was some new revelation or accusation. And they were almost all meaningless." A recording executive is filled with self-loathing for his own blockbuster-driven profession: "The end result of it is that more and more I have to go chase after these bands I don't even give a shit about. . . . It's turning into this giant monster that's basically just shitting all over the place. And the funny thing is, like, nobody seems to notice."
Perhaps the most remarkable and strangely moving account—in a collection chockablock with compelling, vivid minimemoirs—is that of the computer systems programmer and administrator at a university. A classic computer nerd who fell in love with operating code at an early age, he suffers a crisis of faith after he battles a lonely struggle against a series of vicious hacker attacks that bring the university system dangerously close to its knees (even the medical school's life-support system is threatened). "This kind of thing makes me just totally—well, it's changed the way I feel about computer networks," he says with anguish. "And I've lost faith in the Internet, and this whole idea of all its bountiful uses and how it's going to be the bringer of all good things and, you know, the solution to all of our modern communication problems. . . . I'm not going to be here forever. I'm not going to live that long in the grand scheme of things. My life is really a flash in the pan. So I should go out and hike those hills and I should go for those walks while I'm still young—while I can still do that kind of stuff—instead of just sitting here wasting away."
The programmer's loss of faith and his yearning to reconnect with something authentic and meaningful echoes throughout Gig. That occupational concerns feed into a crisis that is essentially spiritual should surprise only those who believe employment to be little more than a "casual" diversion. The OED has 39 definitions of work; the first involves "moral actions considered in relation to justification"—that is to say, the religious quality of one's work is central to the work itself. Or, as film director Tamara Jenkins puts it to the Gig interviewer, "It's not a gig for me." For her, work is the ethical quest of "people who want to do the best that they can do even on something that most people don't notice." Which may be as good a definition of prayer as any. But it's hardly the objective of a ratings-driven marketplace. As the recording executive observed, getting as many people as possible to notice your product—as "shitty" as that product may be—is modern work's prime mission.
The employees who are able to derive some spiritual sustenance from their work are the only happy ones in this collection. In a time when craft has been devalued, that sustenance is more typically drawn from caregiving. Like the anesthesiologist who says, "I really, really enjoy taking pain away from people. I get very philosophical about that." Or the florist who says, "I'm very content at my job," because, "I think what I do brings beauty into people's lives." Or the orthopedic surgeon whose greatest delight comes from shepherding his patients through their distress. "You feel needed. And that's good. And that's all there is to it. The rest is just crap."
The most joyous worker in the book is Judith Halek, the "doula" (a midwife's assistant). "I was meant to do this," she says, one of the few who seem to wear their work like a natural skin. She has no children of her own, she says, "but then I realized that it's sort of like, my work is so full and so rich, it's my vision. It's myself. My whole being. . . . So I am at peace. My work will be my child. The babies and the mothers I have helped, and my articles, and my teaching that I do—those will be my children." She alone of all the chroniclers in Gig experiences her calling as connected with the life force. Her isolation provides its own commentary, which along with the other accounts in this book adds up to a bill of particulars against the New Economy that Studs Terkel would doubtless admire.
[end]
Carl
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