Roughneck Read Online Free PDF Page B

was not going to do any more "fugging around" on company time.
           "Getting too goddamned much money, anyway," he grunted. "We could get a full-time employee for what we're paying you."
           Well, I had to hold the job, at least until the end of the school term. So I restrained my temper—and went without lunch from then on—and I continued to swallow his insults and arrogance in the miserable days that followed. I had plenty of company in my misery. As boorishly rude as he was with me, he was often more so with the other employees. No one could do anything to suit him. He was always "taking over" on a sale or a credit interview, showing the "goddamned incompetents" (us) how it should be handled. And when the sale or the interview went sour, as it often did, he was furious...Goddammit, couldn't we do anything right? How the hell could he do his job and ours, too?
           The credit manager, Durkin, an executive in his own right, caught as much hell as the rest of us. But while he appeared a little hurt at times, he showed no resentment. As a new man, he said, the manager should be given every chance to make good. It was his job to give orders. It was ours to carry them out, insofar as we conscientiously could. That was the only way you could run a business.
           "I'm sure he means well," Durkin would assure me earnestly. "After all, we're all here for the same purpose. We all have the store's best interests at heart."
           I was sure the manager did not mean well, and that he had no one's interest at heart but his own. But I had learned the futility of arguing with Durkin. Not too intelligent outside of his work, he was utterly devoted to the store. And in his mind the absentee owners were minor gods. They 'had' to know what they were doing, and since they had put the manager here, 'he' had to, also...That was that, as far as Durkin was concerned, and it continued to be that until early summer, a couple of weeks before the end of the school term. Then...
           By way of getting new customers into the store, the manager had written a sales letter. Durkin, who had been charged with having it mimeographed and mailed out, showed me a copy of it.
           "You're a writer, Jim," he said. "You know all about these things. What do you think of it?"
           I read it, shaking my head. It was filled with wornout catch phrases which were completely uninformative and brassily offensive. No one was going to believe that we were giving away merchandise. No one would believe that we were in business solely to "befriend the good people of Lincoln" and that we yearned only to be their pals and buddies.
           "It's the worst kind of junk," I told Durkin. "If this doesn't put us out of business, nothing will."
           "Oh?" Durkin frowned troubledly. "You really mean that, Jim? You're not just saying it because he wrote the letter?"
           "It's the awfullest bunch of tripe I ever read in my life," I said, "and you can tell that stupid bastard I said so."
           "Well," Durkin murmured worriedly. "You certainly ought to know, Jim. You're an authority on writing. Maybe I'd better..."
           Turning away from my desk, he went into the manager's office. Almost verbatim he gave that gentleman my opinion of the letter. Then, as the manager gaped at him, apoplectic with fury, Durkin suggested that I be commissioned to write a "really good" letter.
           Well, the manager finally found his voice, and all hell began to pop. He cursed Durkin out at the top of his lungs. Then he called me in and he cursed us both out together. He'd show us, by God. He'd teach us to make fun of our betters. He would have ten thousand of the letters printed up—ten thousand instead of the five thousand he had originally contemplated. And we—Durkin and I—would have the job of addressing, sealing and stamping them. We'd do it on our own time, with no assistance and