Read Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do for Free Online Page A

I cannot picture myself singing to a tractor, I just can’t. (Laughs.) Or singing to steel. (Singsongs.) Oh whoop-dee-doo, I’m at the bonderizer, oh how I love this heavy steel. No thanks. Never hoppen.
    Oh yeah, I daydream. I fantasize about a sexy blonde in Miami who’s got my union dues. (Laughs.) I think of the head of the union the way I think of the head of my company. Living it up. I think of February in Miami. Warm weather, a place to lay in. When I hear a college kid say, “I’m oppressed,” I don’t believe him. You know what I’d like to do for one year? Live like a college kid. Just for one year. I’d love to. Wow! (Whispers) Wow! Sports car! Marijuana! (Laughs.) Wild, sexy broads. I’d love that, hell yes, I would.
    Somebody has to do this work. If my kid ever goes to college, I just want him to have a little respect, to realize that his dad is one of those somebodies. This is why even on—(muses) yeah, I guess, sure—on the black thing . . . (Sighs heavily.) I can’t really hate the colored fella that’s working with me all day. The black intellectual I got no respect for. The white intellectual I got no use for. I got no use for the black militant who’s gonna scream three hundred years of slavery to me while I’m busting my ass. You know what I mean? (Laughs.) I have one answer for that guy: go see Rockefeller. See Harriman. Don’t bother me. We’re in the same cotton field. So just don’t bug me. (Laughs.)
    After work I usually stop off at a tavern. Cold beer. Cold beer right away. When I was single, I used to go into hillbilly bars, get in a lot of brawls. Just to explode. I got a thing on my arm here (indicates scar). I got slapped with a bicycle chain. Oh, wow! (Softly) Mmm. I’m getting older. (Laughs.) I don’t explode as much. You might say I’m broken in. (Quickly) No, I’ll never be broken in. (Sighs.) When you get a little older, you exchange the words. When you’re younger, you exchange the blows.
    When I get home, I argue with my wife a little bit. Turn on TV, get mad at the news. (Laughs.) I don’t even watch the news that much. I watch Jackie Gleason. I look for any alternative to the ten o‘clock news. I don’t want to go to bed angry. Don’t hit a man with anything heavy at five o’clock. He just can’t be bothered. This is his time to relax. The heaviest thing he wants is what his wife has to tell him.
    When I come home, know what I do for the first twenty minutes? Fake it. I put on a smile. I got a kid three years old. Sometimes she says, “Daddy, where’ve you been?” I say, “Work.” I could have told her I’d been in Disneyland. What’s work to a three-year-old kid? If I feel bad, I can’t take it out on the kids. Kids are born innocent of everything but birth. You can’t take it out on your wife either. This is why you go to a tavern. You want to release it there rather than do it at home. What does an actor do when he’s got a bad movie? I got a bad movie every day.
    I don’t even need the alarm clock to get up in the morning. I can go out drinking all night, fall asleep at four, and bam! I’m up at six—no matter what I do. (Laughs.) It’s a pseudo-death, more or less. Your whole system is paralyzed and you give all the appearance of death. It’s an ingrown clock. It’s a thing you just get used to. The hours differ. It depends. Sometimes my wife wants to do something crazy like play five hundred rummy or put a puzzle together. It could be midnight, could be ten o’clock, could be nine thirty.
     
    What do you do weekends?
     
    Drink beer, read a book. See that one? Violence in America. It’s one of them studies from Washington. One of them committees they’re always appointing. A thing like that I read on a weekend. But during the weekdays, gee . . . I just thought about it. I don’t do that much reading from Monday through Friday. Unless it’s a horny book. I’ll read it at work and go home and do my homework. (Laughs.) That’s what