"The company man" written by author Ellen Goodman, gives us a story about a man and how work has consumed him and his life. The story shows us the reader an inside look at the effect of work culture and the impact it has on one's self, family, and livelihood. Throughout the text, we see the journey our main character undergoes and towards the end gives us a self -reflection on the way we see ourselves and how much work we are putting ourselves through.
In Goodman's essay, she starts off with the main character named Phil working himself to death. Goodman explains how the obituary doesn't say that but all of his peers know that was the real cause. Phil was a workaholic who never took breaks and constantly chased the top position. He lived an unhealthy lifestyle and it ended up costing him his life. The purpose Goodman states all of these details is to show just how much Phil was blinded with his work. He completely lost himself and forgot everything else that was important besides work. Goodman also brings this up to let the reader reflect on their lives and see if they have anyone in their life that is like this or even if they are this way at times. Also, Phil wasn't the only one working himself so hard, he was competing against
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He couldn't even have a conversation with his daughter. His one son was just like him and became enveloped in his work, and the other son was never home doing god knows what. When Phil died the one son had to ask neighbors and friends what his own father was like. Goodman's point to even mention Phil's family is to give an understanding of what being away from family for so long can do. When someone said to Phil's wife he will be missed she responded with "I already have". Goodman's story helps us feel compassionate toward Phil's family and makes us become self-conscious of the things we are doing in our
Polly’s mother could no longer manage to take care of her, and therefore, she required the care of another person. All her life she grew up without obtaining proper care and because of this she was incredibly weak and in need of nurturing. Polly needed a home where the people cared for her and gave her peace and rest instead of forcing her to labor. She was unable to complete even the simplest of household tasks and Amos knew this. He provided a safe and peaceful home for her final days. Polly sat still and afraid while being sold. She knew not of what the outcome of the sale would result as and greatly worried. When Amos bought her, he brought comfort and reassurance to both her and her mother. Polly needed Amos, and he came through to
In the movie, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Tom Rath (Gregory Peck) did not exhibit the attributes of William Whyte's organization man. Whyte argued that American business life had abandoned the old virtues of self-reliance in favor of loyalty to the postwar corporation. Corporate life was unfulfilling because its routine and organizational structure robbed men of their identities and the self-fulfillment they previously gained from manual work or jobs in smaller businesses. As the title suggests, men donned suits, becoming indistinguishable from one another, and conformed to this lifestyle. As the protagonist, Tom, said in the movie, "All I could see was a lot of bright young men in grey flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere." This paper will prove that Tom's reliance on his own thinking style created tension for his organizational life at UBC.
People’s attitudes about their works can influence their views of lives. In Maggie Holmes’s interview, she keeps
Curry agrees that work is a job that takes over a person’s life and claims, “The job penetrates every aspect of life. Americans don’t exercise they work out” (15). In his perspective, a job has created this sense of “working out”, in which not the actual going to the gym to workout is being used, but jobs are the place of working out. In his mind working out at the gym has been replaced with typical long houred jobs. This is the case for many people, including the life of Ehrenreich in which the juggling of two jobs, consists of her whole day. She proclaims:
The poem describes workers to be “Killing the overtime ‘cause the dream is your life, / Refusing to take holidays or go home to your spouse, / But for many the overtime comes, ‘cause the work is not done. / Deadlines to be met. So you continue to dream like a war vet, / Having flashbacks to make you shiver and scream” (Jones, stanza 7, lines 2-6). Jones reinforces that overworking for an incentive of money does not give one a sense of gratification, and it also distracts them from the values that should matter more to them than anything else. Both Kohn and Jones have a similar approach to showing the reader the effect that overworking can have on a person, and how it will change their values in life, causing unhappiness. Many students go through school dispirited and do not join various clubs and activities for their own enjoyment. A friend of Kohn’s who was also a high school guidance counsellor had a student with ‘…amazing grade and board scores. It remained only to knock out a dazzling essay on his college applications that would clinch the sale. “Why don’t we start with some books that
Working in the mills is physically demanding. The work that men due are dangerous and accidents and injuries take place at the mill. Life in the steel towns involves the same twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week. Every week there is a shift of working days and nights. On turn days the men work a twenty-hours straight, which leads to tempers and accidents. “Hope sustained him, as it sustained them all; hope and the human.” (Bell, 47) They hoped that the jobs would be there and the money would steadily come in. As Pervosky says, “No work, no pork, no money, no boloney.” (Bell, 268) Without work the men would not be able to provide for their families.
Spending time with each other, having strong morals and giving a lot of love are a few of the things that give families hope and happiness. In the novel A Death in the Family (1938) by James Agee, a family has to use these advantages in order to make it through a very difficult time. During the middle of one night in 1915, the husband, Jay, and his wife, Mary, receive a phone call saying that Jay's father is dying. Ralph, the person who called, is Jay's brother, and he happens to be drunk. Jay doesn't know if he can trust Ralph in saying that their father is dying, but he doesn't want to take the chance of never seeing his father again, so he decides to go see his father. He kisses his wife goodbye and tells her he might be back for dinner the next day, but not to wait up for him. Dinner comes and goes, but he never arrives. That night, Mary gets awakened by a caller saying that Jay has been in a serious auto accident. She later finds out that he died. The rest of the novel is about Mary and her family's reactions to the death. This experience for Mary and her family is something that changes their lives forever, but it doesn't ruin them. If someone has a close person to them decease, he or she feel as if they cannot go on, but because of the close family ties that Mary, Jay, and their children shared, they know that they will be able to continue on after Jays death.
It is safe to say that work comes in many different forms. Whether it be a fast food or a corporate, the people that surround an individual make a great impact on the way he or she may work. Singapore, by Mary Oliver, is about a young woman working as a custodian in an airport who although works alone, enjoys her work and the people she meets. Dorianne Laux’s What I Wouldn’t Do, introduces another young woman reviewing the jobs she has had throughout time and reflects on those that she liked and disliked. Hard Work, by Stephen Dunn, exemplifies a young boy working in a soda factory during his summer break. Searching for happiness in life and work is just what these individuals are doing.
He expresses about his mother working at the restaurant is what made him and this article credible. He got to witness and experience his mom and her “waiting brilliance” up close and personal (Rose, 273). He also states, “I’ve since studied the working habits of blue-collar workers and have come to understand how much my mother’s kind of work demands of both the body and the brain” (274). In this statement he establishes his own credibility as a source of authority on this issue. Rose, the author, wants to open social minds by showing “mental activity” (279) required in blue-collar work is still under-recognized and undervalued by society. The blue-collar workers are not as valued as they deserve but the capability they have is not less than other high-level workers, even sometimes it’s more than
Currently, human beings are thinking more on the line of they need work in order to make a living. For that reason, work has become meaningless, disagreeable, and unnatural. Many view work as a way to obtain money and not a meaningful human activity that one does for themselves. The author states that there are two reactions of the alienated and profoundly unsatisfactory character of the modern industrial work. One being the ideal of complete laziness and the other, hostility towards work. Fromm believes the reason why people have animosity regarding work is due to their unconscious mind. Subconsciously, a person has “a deep-seated, hostility towards work and all that is connected to it” says Fromm. I believe what Fromm is saying to be true, after all I witness it everyday. Millions of people each day goes to a work which they are dissatisfied with and that can negatively impact their attitude
...lp deal with grief and loss. He also reminded readers that we must not think just about ourselves, but others as well.
This is a person’s story, Peggy Sinclair, the operation manager who saved a business from the closure. The story overall shows that how a classical organization transformed to a humane organization. The business was recognized as the toughest in the whole system and in major trouble. Although, the business was a typical efficiency model of Frederick Taylor’s classical organization theory, it wasn’t successful business because the workplace was ignoring the
Rebecca Harding Davis’ “Life in the Iron Mills” captures the nature of capitalism, documenting its inner workings and how a capitalist enterprise—in the context of the story, the factory—gains a consciousness. Davis also explores the nature of this enterprise consciousness, whether it’s something human or an anonymous god-like consciousness. In exploring the nature of a capitalist enterprise gaining consciousness, Davis speaks to the objectification and emotional deprivation of the workers, while giving emotional qualities to the machines. The similarities between the workers’ likely emotions and the machines’ emotions indicate the nature of capitalism to take individual consciousness and give it to the capitalist enterprise (the factory system),
Growing up witnessing his mother work as a waitress, Rose grew to appreciate the skills of physical work from a young age and in his essay takes this appreciation a step further by analyzing the knowledge required of blue-collar workers. First he references his mother’s ability to balance trays on her arm while holding coffee, having knowledge of how to position her body or to remember where each plate should be sat. He also references her ability to multitask, or “make every move count”, and how her mind was constantly at work thinking how to add task together to make sure the needs all her customers were met (281). He also cites the similar traits shared by his Uncle Joe. Joe worked as the foreman at General Motors, a quick paced environment as mentally taxing as family restaurant. Rose tells how his uncle “constantly faced new problems and became a consummate multitasker, evaluating a flurry of demands quickly, parceling out physical and mental resources” (282). His uncle learned to solve any problem, and even found areas in the shop where improvements could be made. Because of his experience, Joe was not only able to innovate the nozzle for spray painting cares but also began using shift rotation on the floor to ease the stress of factory workers (282-283). By adding his uncle’s experience, Rose is able to provide a more detailed explanation
DONKIN, R (2001) Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Evolution of Work London: Texere. (Ch. 11 – Western Electric Discovers Motivation).