Getting a Job Done
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Getting a Job
From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
My room had all the cheeriness of a dungeon and the appeal of a tomb. It was going to be impossible to stay there, but leaving held no attraction for me, either.
The answer came to me with the suddenness of a collision. I would go to work. Mother wouldnt be difficult to convince; after all, in school I was a year ahead of my grade and mother was a firm believer in self-sufficiency. In fact, shed be pleased to think that I had that much gumption, that much of her in my character. (she liked to speak of herself as the original “do-it-yourself girl.”)
Once I had settled on getting a job, all that remained was to decide which kind of job I was most fitted for. My intellectual pride had kept me from selecting typing, shorthand, or filing as subjects in school, so office work was ruled out. War plants and shipyards demanded birth certificates, and mine would reveal me to be fifteen, and ineligible for work. So the well-paying defense jobs were also out. Women had replaced men on the streetcars as conductors and motormen, and the thought of sailing up and down the hills of San Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my belt, caught my fancy.
Mother was as easy as I had anticipated. The world was moving so fast, so much money was being made, so many people were dying in Guam, and Germany, that hordes of strangers became good friends overnight. Life was cheap and death entirely free. How could she have the time to think about my academic career?
To her question of what I planned to do, I replied that I would get a job on the streetcars. She rejected the proposal with: “they dont accept colored people on streetcars.”
I would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the noble determination to break the restricting tradition. But the truth is, my first reaction was one of disappointment. Id pictured myself, dressed in a neat blue serge suit, my money changer swinging jauntily at my waist, and a cheery smile for the passengers which would make their own work day brighter.
From disappointment, I gradually ascended the emotion ladder to haughty indignation, and finally to the state of stubbornness where the mind is blocked like the jaws of an enraged bulldog.
I would go to work on the streetcars and wear a blue serge suit. Mother gave me her support with one of her usual terse asides, “thats what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything youve got. Ive told you many times, cant do is like Dont Care. Neither of them have a home.”
Translated, that meant there was nothing a person cant do, and there should be nothing a human being didnt care about. It was the most positive encouragement I could have hope for.
In the offices of the Market Street Railway Company, the receptionist seemed as surprised to see me there as I was surprised to find the interior dingy and the dйcor drab. Somehow I had expected waxed surfaces and carpeted floors. If I had met no resistance, I might have decided against working for such a poor-mouth-looking concern. As it was, I was explained that I had come to see about a job. She asked, was I sent by an agency, and when I replied that I was not, she told me they were only accepting applicants from agencies.
The classified pages of the morning papers had listed advertisements for motorettes and conductorettes and I reminded her of that. She gave me a face full of astonishment that my suspicious nature would not accept.
“I am applying for the job listed in this mornings chronicle and Id like to be presented to your personnel manager.” While I spoke in supercilious accents, and looked at the room as if I had an oil well in my backyard, my armpits were being pricked my millions of hot pointed needles. She saw her escape and dived into it.
“Hes out. Hes out for the day. You might call tomorrow and if hes in, Im sure you can see him.” Then she swiveled her chair around on its rusty screws and with that I was supposed to be dismissed.
“May I ask his name?”
she half turned, acting surprised to find me still there.
“His name? Whose name?”
“Your personnel manager.”
We were firmly joined in the hypocrisy to play out the scene.
“The personnel manager? Oh, hes Mr.Cooper, but Im not sure youll find him here tomorrow. Hes.. Oh, but you can try.”
“Thank you.”
“Youre welcome.”
And I was out of the musty room and into the even mustier lobby. In the street I saw the receptionist and myself going faithfully through paces that were stale with familiarity, although I had encountered that kind of situation before and, probably, neither had she. We were like actors who, knowing the play by heart, were still able to cry afresh over the old tragedies and laugh spontaneously at the comic situations.
The miserable little encounter had nothing to do with me, the me of me, any more than it had to do with that silly clerk. The incident was a recurring dream, concocted years before by stupid whites and it eternally came back to haunt us all. The secretary and I were like Hamlet and Laertes in the final scene, where, because of harm done by one ancestor to another, we were bound to duel to the death. Also because the play must end somewhere.
I went further than forgiving the clerk, I accepted her as a fellow victim of the same puppeteer.
On the streetcar, I put my fare into the box and the conductorette looked at me with the usual hard eyes of white contempt. “Move into the car, please move on in the car.” She patted her money changer.
Her Southern nasal accent sliced my meditation and I looked deep into my thoughts. All lies, all comfortable lies. The receptionist was not innocent and neither was I. the whole charade we had played out In the crummy waiting room had directly to do with me, Black, and her, white.
I wouldnt move into the streetcar but stood on the ledge over the conductor, glaring. My mind shouted so energetically that the announcement made my veins stand out, and my