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

the guys at the plant call it—homework. (Laughs.) Sometimes my wife works on Saturday and I drink beer at the tavern.
    I went out drinking with one guy, oh, a long time ago. A college boy. He was working where I work now. Always preaching to me about how you need violence to change the system and all that garbage. We went into a hillbilly joint. Some guy there, I didn’t know him from Adam, he said, “You think you’re smart.” I said, “What’s your pleasure?” (Laughs.) He said, “My pleasure’s to kick your ass.” I told him I really can’t be bothered. He said, “What’re you, chicken?” I said, “No, I just don’t want to be bothered.” He came over and said something to me again. I said, “I don’t beat women, drunks, or fools. Now leave me alone.”
    The guy called his brother over. This college boy that was with me, he came nudging my arm, “Mike, let’s get out of here.” I said, “What are you worried about?” (Laughs.) This isn’t unusual. People will bug you. You fend it off as much as you can with your mouth and when you can’t, you punch the guy out.
    It was close to closing time and we stayed. We could have left, but when you go into a place to have a beer and a guy challenges you—if you expect to go in that place again, you don’t leave. If you have to fight the guy, you fight.
    I got just outside the door and one of these guys jumped on me and grabbed me around the neck. I grabbed his arm and flung him against the wall. I grabbed him here (indicates throat), and jiggled his head against the wall quite a few times. He kind of slid down a little bit. This guy who said he was his brother took a swing at me with a garrison belt. He just missed and hit the wall. I’m looking around for my junior Stalin (laughs), who loves violence and everything. He’s gone. Split. (Laughs.) Next day I see him at work. I couldn’t get mad at him, he’s a baby.
    He saw a book in my back pocket one time and he was amazed. He walked up to me and he said, “You read?” I said, “What do you mean, I read?” He said, “All these dummies read the sports pages around here. What are you doing with a book?” I got pissed off at the kid right away. I said, “What do you mean, all these dummies? Don’t knock a man who’s paying somebody else’s way through college.” He was a nineteen-year-old effete snob.
     
    Yet you want your kid to be an effete snob?
     
    Yes. I want my kid to look at me and say, “Dad, you’re a nice guy, but you’re a fuckin’ dummy.” Hell yes, I want my kid to tell me that he’s not gonna be like me . . .
    If I were hiring people to work, I’d try naturally to pay them a decent wage. I’d try to find out their first names, their last names, keep the company as small as possible, so I could personalize the whole thing. All I would ask a man is a handshake, see you in the morning. No applications, nothing. I wouldn’t be interested in the guy’s past. Nobody ever checks the pedigree on a mule, do they? But they do on a man. Can you picture walking up to a mule and saying, “I’d like to know who his granddaddy was?”
    I’d like to run a combination bookstore and tavern. (Laughs.) I would like to have a place where college kids came and a steelworker could sit down and talk. Where a workingman could not be ashamed of Walt Whitman and where a college professor could not be ashamed that he painted his house over the weekend.
    If a carpenter built a cabin for poets, I think the least the poets owe the carpenter is just three or four one-liners on the wall. A little plaque: Though we labor with our minds, this place we can relax in was built by someone who can work with his hands. And his work is as noble as ours. I think the poet owes something to the guy who builds the cabin for him.
    I don’t think of Monday. You know what I’m thinking about on Sunday night? Next Sunday. If you work real hard, you think of a perpetual vacation. Not perpetual sleep . . . What do