Customer Reviews

How to Tell When You're Tired: A Brief Examination of Work

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

MBA students are taught to look down on labor, to see laborers as resources to be used. Mr. Theriault reminds us of the dignity inherent in labor, the pains and the pleasures. It reminded me of Studs Terkel's books on working. Parts of it reminded me of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations". Mr. Theriault earned my respect, both as a working man and as a skilled writer. You might also want to read "Fields Without Dreams" by a professor of ancient classics about his family's life as farmers until they lost their farm.

Reg Theriault's book is simply superb--just the right combination of personal anecdote, philosophical reflection, sociological commentary, old-timer's wisdom, and humor. In reading him, one comes to like Theriault. He's the sort of guy you wish you could work with on your own job or at least meet after work at the local pub for a couple of beers.

Theriault's primary job before retirement was working as a longshoreman in San Francisco. But he was also a "fruit tramp" (a migrant picker) and an occasional factory worker. His credentials as a "blue collar worker," then, are impeccable, and he distills thirty-odd years of experience in heavy physical labor into his book. His two primary conclusions are these: (1) salary is important, but freedom is too. Workers caught in an assembly line kind of job where they're nothing more than anonymous cogs in a Taylorite efficiency machine are more likely to rebel than workers dissatisfied with money. (2) the relationship between labor and management always reduces to the following dynamic: "Management is going to get more out of you than it gives in return. This is a fact of life, and one might as well accept it. If management does not get more--for instance, if it gets less--then why in the hell should it stick around? Your goal is to see that management does not get too much more." (pp. 96-97) Both of these conclusions, although they may appear obvious when pointed out, ought to be kept in mind when thinking about working conditions in this country, not to mention the foreign sweatshops that make so many commodities we North Americans buy.

Along the way, Theriault reflects on the disappearing blue collar working class; differences between blue and white collar workers; worries that for too many people, work is "a hole in their lives"; tells the hilarious but also poignant story of Billy's lost finger; and reminds us of the good/bad old days of labor by telling old-timer stories told to him when he was a boy.

All in all, a remarkable book. And the photograph on the cover is as gripping an image as I've ever seen.

This book offered an insight into the psychology and complex existence of hard physical labor that should throw fear into the hearts of management. I was so sad when this book was over and I find myself referring to it frequently as a student of labor management relations. Well worth owning! Great anecdotes and harsh realities that most college kids will never face makes it all the more valuable.

While reading through this work I found that although the author was lifting 154 pound bags of coffee beans on a daily basis isn't all that dissimilar that being a cube dweller. The fact is that sitting in front of a computer in your cube messing with spreadsheets all day long contains many of the same mental drudges but doesn't affor some of the opportunities for the "on and off" time that the author descirbes in his manual labor work.

Though I am unable to verify his statistics I was still astonished at the number of so called "white collar" workers that applied for jobs in San Francisco when the Stevedores Union opened up their hiring a few years ago.

Interesting thoughts and concepts abound, but I found remarkably similar parallels between "cube Jockeys" and the manual labor workers the author is so familiar with. Certainly worth the read.

Steve in Austin, Tx.

This book is a sleeper; an old clunker that sags in the middle, wheezes and farts at the stop-light and then lays two-hundred feet of rubber as it takes off!

If you like this as much as I, try "RIVETHEAD" by Ben Hamper.

The writer begins with a great premise concerning work, which few members of the work force consider. He proceeds to spend the last half of the book bitching. So, ...just read the first half <G>!