Working: Dolores Dante + Phil Stallings

These chapters on the working class of America offer a blunt perspective on American life.
The first comes from Dolores Dante, a waitress who has worked in the same restaurant for twenty-three years. Anyone devoted to the same job at the same place for that long certainly has a quality which not many have: patience. Dolores says that the reason she became a waitress was because she "needed money fast and you don't get it in an office" (329). Immediately, Dolores qualifies her decision to become a waitress by dismissing a common misconception about waitresses. She says that many believe that waitresses have broken homes because they're waitresses, while really she was a waitress because she had a broken home. Dolores takes pride in her work, seeing herself as an actress due to her ability to improvise and think on her feet. She sees the life skills that she has adopted while working as a waitress as more important than any that could be learned elsewhere. Constantly Dolores is judging other people and is being judged by them as well. Regardless, she has a simple outlook on life, evident by the fact that her biggest fears in life are the bathroom and the grave (332). She tries to be liked by everyone because she knows the feeling of having someone talk badly about you. All of her life she has only tried to satisfy, and she bottles up all of the hurt inside of her. She hurts inside, but she remains optomistic and looks forward to the next day when she will get to perform once again. Her view of an American is always remaining optomistic, regardless of the circumstances. Sometimes, the hurt in life has to be ignored so that the happiness can come out.
The second story comes from Phil Stallings, an auto worker at the Ford assembly plant on the South Side of Chicago. Phil does the monotonous job of putting the initial welds on a car by pressing a button on a welding gun. He figures that he presses that button about 12,288 times every day. During this time, Phil lets his mind drift, thinking of past experiences and a life that wasn't so complex, the life of his childhood self. Phil admits that this is the only thing that keeps him sane during the day. He starts to wonder, and perhaps wrongfully so, what the Ford company probably thinks of him. The answer is not to his liking, as he realizes that the company could easily find another replacement were something horrible to happen to him. "The only thing they have on their mind is to keep that line running" (356). Stallings witnesses so many injustices, many to himself, all carried out by the company that employs him, yet he refuses to quit. He needs the money and this is the easiest job he can find. However, his refusal to take action doesn't stop him from thinking that something should be done. He thinks, "A job should be a job, not a death sentence" (359).