Working. Part 4

We can't go out and get our own jobs. When we get laid off we have to call the union hall and they send you to a job whenever it's your turn. But there's so many people work for a contractor, say, for twelve, fifteen years, these people will do anything to keep their job. They don't think of the safety of another operator, of his equipment or anything. They're doing things to please the contractor. You have some contractors that'll try to get an operator to work below scale. But not like you used to. The majority of contractors are pretty good.

Instead of asking for more money, the union should ask for better conditions. Conditions are being improved, though. Our union has hired a man, he can call a man out on a job if he thinks it was unsafe. Years ago, if you said it was unsafe, they fired you.

Oh yeah, every union has a clique. I don't care what union it is, their own people are going to work more. I mean their brothers and their son and such like that. And as the machinery gets more complicated, you have to learn how to read them. Somebody has to teach you. But if you're just another person and have no pull, why then you're not gonna have an opportunity to learn it.

Sure, there's a lot of colored boys do real good work. You set down with 'em and you have your lunch and there's no hard feelings. But there again, they hate you because you are something. You didn't get this just through a friend. You got it through hard work and that's the only way you're gonna get it. I was an apprentice and I worked my way up.

My father was a crane operator since 1923. We lived on a farm and he was away from home a lot. So I said I'd never do this. When I got out of the service, I went to school and was a watchmaker. I couldn't stay in the pack. It was the same thing, every day and every day. It was inside. And being a farm boy . . . So I went to work with my father, construction work, and stayed with it ever since.

I have one son doin' this work. But this youngest one, he's pretty intelligent, I'd like to see him be a professional man if he will. Of course, I wanted the other one too. But . . . there's so many changes now. When I started, to build a road a mile it took you two or three months. Now they can build a mile a day. The work is so much more seasonal because they can do it so much quicker. Your chances of being off work in the wintertime is a lot greater now than it was years ago.

When they put up this new strip on the Dan Ryan,13 they had one machine there that did the work of five machines fifteen years ago. It did it faster and so much better. It would take one man to do that. Fifteen years ago, it took five men and it took all summer. They did it now in three months. I just don't know . . .

There's a certain amount of pride-I don't care how little you did. You drive down the road and you say, "I worked on this road." If there's a bridge, you say, "I worked on this bridge." Or you drive by a building and you say, "I worked on this building." Maybe it don't mean anything to anybody else, but there's a certain pride knowing you did your bit.

That building we put up, a medical building. Well, that granite was imported from Canada. It was really expensive. Well, I set all this granite around there. So you do this and you don't make a scratch on it. It's food for your soul that you know you did it good. Where somebody walks by this building you can say, "Well, I did that."

BOOK TWO.

COMMUNICATIONS.

In coming of age, communications has become an end in itself. . . . We are all wired for sound. . . .

-Wright Morris.

SHARON ATKINS.

A receptionist at a large business establishment in the Midwest. She is twenty-four. Her husband is a student. "I was out of college, an English Lit. major. I looked around for copywriting jobs. The people they wanted had majored in journalism. Okay, the first myth that blew up in my face is that a college education will get you a job."

I changed my opinion of receptionists because now I'm one. It wasn't the dumb broad at the front desk who took telephone messages. She had to be something else because I thought I was something else. I was fine until there was a press party. We were having a fairly intelligent conversation. Then they asked me what I did. When I told them, they turned around to find other people with name tags. I wasn't worth bothering with. I wasn't being rejected because of what I had said or the way I talked, but simply because of my function. After that, I tried to make up other names for what I did-communications control, servomechanism. (Laughs.) I don't think they'd ever hire a male receptionist. They'd have to pay him more, for one thing. You can't pay someone who does what I do very much. It isn't economically feasible. (Laughs.) You're there just to filter people and filter telephone calls. You're there just to handle the equipment. You're treated like a piece of equipment, like the telephone.

You come in at nine, you open the door, you look at the piece of machinery, you plug in the headpiece. That's how my day begins. You tremble when you hear the first ring. After that, it's sort of downhill- unless there's somebody on the phone who is either kind or nasty. The rest of the people are just non, they don't exist. They're just voices. You answer calls, you connect them to others, and that's it.

I don't have much contact with people. You can't see them. You don't know if they're laughing, if they're being satirical or being kind. So your conversations become very abrupt. I notice that in talking to people. My conversations would be very short and clipped, in short sentences, the way I talk to people all day on the telephone.

I never answer the phone at home. It carries over. The way I talk to people on the phone has changed. Even when my mother calls, I don't talk to her very long. I want to see people to talk to them. But now, when I see them, I talk to them like I was talking on the telephone. It isn't a conscious process. I don't know what's happened. When I'm talking to someone at work, the telephone rings, and the conversation is interrupted. So I never bother finis.h.i.+ng sentences or finis.h.i.+ng thoughts. I always have this feeling of interruption.

You can think about this thing and all of a sudden the telephone rings and you've got to jump right back. There isn't a ten-minute break in the whole day that's quiet. I once worked at a punch press, when I was in high school. A part-time job. You sat there and watched it for four, five hours. You could make up stories about people and finish them. But you can't do that when you've got only a few minutes. You can't pick it up after the telephone call. You can't think, you can't even finish a letter. So you do quickie things, like read a chapter in a short story. It has to be short-term stuff.

I notice people have asked me to slow down when I'm talking. What I do all day is to say what I have to say as quickly as possible and switch the call to whoever it's going to. If I'm talking to a friend, I have to make it quick before I get interrupted.

You try to fill up your time with trying to think about other things: what you're going to do on the weekend or about your family. You have to use your imagination. If you don't have a very good one and you bore easily, you're in trouble. Just to fill in time, I write real bad poetry or letters to myself and to other people and never mail them. The letters are fantasies, sort of rambling, how I feel, how depressed I am.

I do some drawings-Mondrian, sort of. Peaceful colors of red and blue. Very ordered life. I'd like to think of rainbows and mountains. I never draw humans. Things of nature, never people. I always dream I'm alone and things are quiet. I call it the land of no-phone, where there isn't any machine telling me where I have to be every minute.

The machine dictates. This crummy little machine with b.u.t.tons on it-you've got to be there to answer it. You can walk away from it and pretend you don't hear it, but it pulls you. You know you're not doing anything, not doing a h.e.l.l of a lot for anyone. Your job doesn't mean anything. Because you're just a little machine. A monkey could do what I do. It's really unfair to ask someone to do that.

Do you have to lie sometimes?

Oh sure, you have to lie for other people. That's another thing: having to make up stories for them if they don't want to talk to someone on the telephone. At first I'd feel embarra.s.sed and I'd feel they knew I was lying. There was a sense of emptiness. There'd be a silence, and I'd feel guilty. At first I tried to think of a euphemism for "He's not here." It really bothered me. Then I got tired of doing it, so I just say, "He's not here." You're not looking at the person, you're talking to him over the instrument. (Laughs.) So after a while it doesn't really matter. The first time it was live. The person was there. I'm sure I blushed. He probably knew I was lying. And I think he understood I was just the instrument, not the source.

Until recently I'd cry in the morning. I didn't want to get up. I'd dread Fridays because Monday was always looming over me. Another five days ahead of me. There never seemed to be any end to it. Why am I doing this? Yet I dread looking for other jobs. I don't like filling out forms and taking typing tests. I remember on applications I'd put down, "I'd like to deal with the public." (Laughs.) Well, I don't want to deal with the public any more.

I take the bus to work. That was my big decision. I had to go to work and do what everyone else told me to do, but I could decide whether to take the bus or the el. To me, that was a big choice. Those are the only kinds of decisions you make and they become very important to you.

Very few people talk on the bus going home. Sort of sit there and look dejected. Stare out the window, pull out their newspaper, or push other people. You feel tense until the bus empties out or you get home. Because things happen to you all day long, things you couldn't get rid of. So they build up and everybody is feeding them into each other on the bus. There didn't seem to be any kind of relief about going home. It was: Boy! Did I have a lot of garbage to put up with!

One minute to five is the moment of triumph. You physically turn off the machine that has dictated to you all day long. You put it in a drawer and that's it. You're your own man for a few hours. Then it calls to you every morning that you have to come back.

I don't know what I'd like to do. That's what hurts the most. That's why I can't quit the job. I really don't know what talents I may have. And I don't know where to go to find out. I've been fostered so long by school and didn't have time to think about it.

My father's in watch repair. That's always interested me, working with my hands, and independent. I don't think I'd mind going back and learning something, taking a piece of furniture and refinis.h.i.+ng it. The type of thing where you know what you're doing and you can create and you can fix something to make it function. At the switchboard you don't do much of anything.

I think the whole idea of receptionists is going to change. We're going to have to find machines which can do that sort of thing. You're wasting an awful lot of human power.

I'll be home and the telephone will ring and I get nervous. It reminds me of the telephone at work. It becomes like Pavlov's bell. (Laughs.) It made the dogs salivate. It makes me nervous. The machine invades me all day. I'd go home and it's still there. It's a very bad way to talk to people, to communicate. It may have been a boon to business but it did a lot to wreck conversation. (Laughs.) FRANCES SWENSON.

A bungalow in a lower-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood in the city. A widow, she lives with her grown son. "How would I describe myself? A happy-go-lucky middle-aged woman." (Laughs.) The walls are decorated with paper tole. It is her handiwork. "It actually looks like real flowers. I enjoy keeping my hands busy. It keeps me out of trouble. I also sew, but I wouldn't want to make my living doing that. The eyes kinda get faded after you get older. You have to have extra strong gla.s.ses to see to sew."

She is a switchboard operator at a large motel frequented by conventioneers. She has had this job for three years, though she has been a tele-ph.o.r.e operator for at least fifteen.

"There are always five girls at the board. They can only take lunch one at a time. I'm fifty. The little one next to me is twenty. The one next to her is twenty. The other one's about forty. And the other one's about thirty-five. Oh, I love 'em and they love me. They think I'm a great old lady." (Laughs.) You have to have a nice smiling voice. You can't be angry or come in like you've been out the night before. (Laughs.) You always have to be pleasant-no matter how bad you feel.

I had one gentleman the other day and he wanted an outside call. I asked his name and room number, which we have to charge to his room. And he says, "What's it to you?" I said, "I'm sorry, sir, this is our policy." And he gets a little hostile. But you just take it with a grain of salt and you just keep on working. Inside you and in your head you get mad. But you still have to be nice when the next call comes in. There's no way to let it out. I'm pretty easy to get along with. I'm not the type to get angry on the phone.

You try to imagine what they look like, which is very hard. Even age is hard to tell on the phone. My phone voice is a lot different than my home voice. I can call the switchboard right now and they wouldn't know it was me.

First thing I do is get my headset on, and I sit down at the board to relieve the girl that's been working all night. This is a board that's twenty-four hours. It's the type of chair that a stenographer would sit on. Believe me, after eight hours, it's not a comfortable chair. (Laughs.) We are constantly kept busy. There isn't an idle moment. There's not much time to converse. I have worked in different offices and you can even take the chance to pick up a crochet hook, to keep your fingers busy. Not here.

I worked 125 hours last two weeks. We asked the boss why we didn't get time and a half overtime. He says, "Well, the girls at the front desk are getting it, I don't see why you don't. You'll get it starting the first of the month." We were informed today we were not going to get it. The one that told us okayed it, but there are two higher in the hotel than he.

At one time, they tried to bring the union in, but two girls voted it down and then they decided to quit. But it has to be. Because I lost my weekend. I was invited to a cookout and I didn't go. They needed me, so I figured okay, I'll go, they need me. But I lost out on a little fun.

It's the tension you're under while you're sitting there working. At one time Illinois Bell had a rest home. Years ago, when the switchboard operators became tense, overwrought, they sent them there. They had nervous breakdowns. They don't have it now because I think things have gotten easier.

I'm tired at the end of the day. Say you pick up a thousand calls a day, and these cords are on heavy weights, and they get pretty heavy at the end of eight hours. You go to pick 'em up and they'll slide right out of your hand, and you drop it. I worked with an operator who said she had more strength in her hand than a man because of using her hand all day.

This board where I'm at now, you have to reach. The jacks are up pretty high. It's not easy on the arms. Sometimes the cords are so close together as your fingers and you've got to reach in-between if they want that number in-between, so you break your fingernails.

When you get up like in my age and go to work, it's a grind. We can't take even one break because you're constantly needed.

If you got to go, you've got to come right back. 'Cause you don't get a fifteen-minute break. This last week, when we were so busy, I said it would be nice if we had a place to stretch out. Sometimes you get so wound up you don't want to eat. I didn't want to eat for a couple of days, not because I wasn't hungry, but I didn't want to eat downstairs and there was nowhere else to go to get food. I went and sat in a different department just to get away from the switchboard. Because it's the yackety-yak and constant conversation, and it's really noisy.

You're never without your headset. Your cords are retractable and you're talking as you get a drink of water. It's a pitcher we have about fifteen feet away. We're still plugged in and we're saying, "Can I help you, sir?"

When you see one girl kinda slow down and relax, it puts the burden on the other girls. The main thing is to get the cord out of your hand and get rid of the call. If a customer wants to know how much the meals are, you don't sit and tell them, you give the call to the restaurant. Some of these people I work with will sit and they will explain everything. You've got to get rid of the call. The telephone company trains you to pick up more than one call at a time.

A lot of men don't realize what a switchboard is and how complicated they are. We had one of the young men-an a.s.sistant manager trainee-he worked just the lunch hour, and he had it. You got to memorize all the departments. You can't keep looking at your sheets, you gotta remember these things.

I think switchboard operators are the most underpaid, 'cause we are the hub of everything. When you call somebody, you want immediate service. Of course, I chose the job. If you choose the job, it's your responsibility. Just because I feel I'm not paid enough doesn't mean I'm not gonna give 'em good work.

The kids today don't work like the older women. They take a job as it comes. If they want to work, they work. If they don't, they fool around. We have a couple that sit on the phone half of the day, take time out. That puts the burden on the rest of the girls. The older women are more loyal, they're more conscientious, they don't take time off.

I had to have plumbing done in the back yard here. I asked a girl to switch s.h.i.+fts with me so I wouldn't keep them hanging that they couldn't get a girl to come in. I said if you can work my trick, I'll work yours. Where the other girls, they'd say, "I'm staying home tomorrow."

Anybody that has done switchboard likes switchboard. It's not lonesome. You're talking to people. You ask another switchboard operator, they like it.

Want to hear a good one? (Laughs.) It was one o'clock in the morning. A phone call came in. I worked the night s.h.i.+ft. And I said, "Holiday Inn." I said it because we're not Holiday Inn, I was just fooling around. The little girl I worked with turned me in. So the boss called me in. She said, "Why did you do it?" I said, "Just for a lark. It was quiet, nothing to do." She said, "Fran, you're a good operator and we all love you, but I don't know why you did it." I said, "I wanted to have a little fun."

The little girl, after she did it, she said she was sorry. About a week later, I said to her, "Young lady, I was gonna quit, but I wouldn't do it for the likes of you." And she says, "Fran, I admire you because you didn't say anything to me in front of the boss." And I said, "Well, you're pretty low because you have done things I would never have told on."

The operators' code is: You don't hear what the one next to you is saying. This is the way I was taught. Whether she's flirtin' with somebody is none of my business. What I done I did for fun. I didn't think it was very bad. (Laughs.) I never listen in on a phone conversation, but I'll tell you what. I worked for Illinois Bell and I don't care who the operator is, the greatest thing is listening on phone calls. (Laughs.) When you're not busy. At the motel, no. At Bell, I did. If you work nights and it's real quiet, I don't think there's an operator who hasn't listened in on calls. The night goes faster.

At the phone company, during the war, there were times when we had to listen in on a call that would be-I'll say a Spanish-speaking person. They were being monitored. We'd have to say, "This is the Spanish-speaking call." You can monitor any switchboard.

I always had my fingers in the switchboard. We get real friendly. We're supposed to wear our names. Mine's just Frances. It's not even Frances, I'm Fran. The a.s.sistant manager, we refer to him as mister. I've always respected a name. These young kids today don't. They call people by their first names. The last place I worked, we called him mister. He was a buyer and I figured he should have respect. I'm only a switchboard operator. I'm Fran. It wouldn't be miss.

But I feel they need us badly. They need us to be polite and they need us to be nice. You cannot have a business and have a bad switchboard operator. We are the hub of that hotel.

And we don't get respect. We don't get it from the bosses or the guests. Although they are nice to us. But if they knew how hard we worked. Today communications is the big thing. So much business is over the phone. I really think we demand a little more respect.

We sit there and we joke, "Wouldn't it be great if we could just take this handful of plugs and just yank 'em?" (Laughs.) We think of it, we think of it. Like I said, you get so tense . . . If we could just pull 'em. (Laughs.) Disconnect them and see what happens. You accidentally disconnect somebody, which happens quite often. You don't do it on purpose, although there are times when you feel you'd like to do it.

HEATHER LAMB.

For almost two years she has been working as a long distance telephone operator at Illinois Bell. A naval base is nearby. She works three nights a week, split s.h.i.+ft, during the high-school season and a full forty hours in the summertime. She is turning eighteen.

It's a strange atmosphere. You're in a room about the size of a gymnasium, talking to people thousands of miles away. You come in contact with at least thirty-five an hour. You can't exchange any ideas with them. They don't know you, they never will. You feel like you might be missing people. You feel like they put a coin in the machine and they've got you. You're there to perform your service and go. You're kind of detached.

A lot of the girls are painfully shy in real life. You get some girls who are outgoing in their work, but when they have to talk to someone and look them in the face, they can't think of what to say. They feel self-conscious when they know someone can see them. At the switchboard, it's a feeling of anonymousness.

There are about seven or eight phrases that you use and that's it: "Good morning, may I help you?" "Operator, may I help you?" "Good afternoon." "Good evening," "What number did you want?" "Would you repeat that again?" "I have a collect call for you from so-and-so, will you accept the charge?" "It'll be a dollar twenty cents." That's all you can say.

A big thing is not to talk with a customer. If he's upset, you can't say more than "I'm sorry you've been having trouble." If you get caught talking with a customer, that's one mark against you. You can't help but want to talk to them if they're in trouble or if they're just feeling bad or something. For me it's a great temptation to say, "Gee, what's the matter?" You don't feel like you're really that much helping people.

Say you've got a guy on the line calling from Vietnam, his line is busy and you can't interrupt. G.o.d knows when he'll be able to get on his line again. You know he's lonesome and he wants to talk to somebody, and there you are and you can't talk to him. There's one person who feels badly and you can't do anything. When I first started, I asked the operator and she says, "No, he can always call another time."

One man said, "I'm lonesome, will you talk to me?" I said, "Gee I'm sorry, I just can't." But you can't. (Laughs.) I'm a communications person but I can't communicate.

I've worked here almost two years and how many girls' first names do I know? Just their last name is on their headset. You might see them every day and you won't know their names. At Ma Bell they speak of teamwork, but you don't even know the names of the people who are on your team.

It's kind of awkward if you meet someone from the company and say, "Hi there, Jones," or whatever. (Laughs.) It's very embarra.s.sing. You sit in the cafeteria and you talk to people and you don't even know their names. (Laughs.) I've gone to a lot of people I've been talking to for a week and I've said, "Tell me your name." (Laughs.) You have a number-mine's 407. They put your number on your tickets, so if you made a mistake they'll know who did it. You're just an instrument. You're there to dial a number. It would be just as good for them to punch out the number.

The girls sit very close. She would be not even five or six inches away from me. The big thing is elbows, especially if she's left-handed. That's why we have so many colds in the winter, you're so close. If one person has a cold, the whole office has a cold. It's very catchy.

You try to keep your fingernails short because they break. If you go to plug in, your fingernail goes. You try to wear your hair simple. It's not good to have your hair on top of your head. The women don't really come to work if they've just had their hair done. The headset flattens it.

Your arms don't really get tired, your mouth gets tired. It's strange, but you get tired of talking, 'cause you talk constantly for six hours without a break.

Half the phones have a new system where the quarter is three beeps, a dime is two beeps, and a nickel is one beep. If the guy's in a hurry and he keeps throwing in money, all the beeps get all mixed up together (laughs), and you don't know how much money is in the phone. So it's kinda hard.

When you have a call, you fill it out on this IBM card. Those go with a special machine. You use a special pencil so it'll go through this computer and pick up the numbers. It's real soft lead, it just goes all over the desk and you're all dirty by the time you get off. (Laughs.) And sometimes your back hurts if your chair isn't up at the right height and you have to bend over and write. And keeping track. You don't get just one call at a time.

There is also the clock. You've got a clock next to you that times every second. When the light goes off, you see the party has answered, you have to write down the hour, the minute, and the second. Okay, you put that in a special slot right next to the cord light. You're ready for another one. Still you've got to watch the first one. When the light goes on, they disconnect and you've got to take that card out again and time down the hour, the minute, and the second-plus keeping on taking other calls. It's hectic.

If you work the day s.h.i.+ft, conversations are short, so they come down in time amount to trying to take down a man's credit card number and collecting another man's money. One man waiting for his overtime, another man waiting for you to put his call through. Sometimes your tickets get all messed up-and that makes people even madder. And it doesn't help when people are crabby and they don't talk loud enough.

Businessmen get very upset if they have to repeat their credit card number. Sometimes they're talking to you and they're talking to their partner and you're trying to listen for the number. They'll say something to their partner and you think it's for you and they get irritated. You get very sensitive to people's voices. Sometimes you get mad. Why should this man be yelling at me? I do feel put-down a lot.

But other times there's a real sense of power. I can tell you when you have to stop talking. You have to pay me the money. If you don't pay me the money, I can do this and this to you. You feel that more when you're talking to people who have to pay for their calls, like sailors at the base. But with the businessmen, you get a feeling of helplessness. He can ruin you. You've got real power over the poorer people. They don't even have a phone, so they can't complain. This businessman can write a letter to Ma Bell. I'm more tolerant of the people who are calling from a pay phone and haven't got much money. But businessmen, I make him pay for every second of his call. (Laughs.) I'm more powerful than him at the moment. (Laughs.) I think telephone prices are really too high. Dialing direct is cheap, but the poorer people who don't have private phones and have to use pay phones, the costs are exhorbitant. It's preying on poor people.

You can always get a date over the phone if you want. I've gotten asked so many times. (Laughs.) You always make some little comment, especially when you're bored late at night. I talk with a Southern accent or a Puerto Rican accent. Or try to make your voice real s.e.xy, just to see what kind of reaction . . . No, no, I never accepted dates. (Laughs.) n.o.body ever sounded . . .

A lot of times, they leave the phone and bill it to others. You call the number they gave and they say, "I don't know him." The operator isn't charged for any of this, but they do keep track. How many calls you take, how well you mark your tickets, how many errors you make. You're constantly being pushed.

If you're depressed 'cause the day hasn't gone right, it shows in how you talk to people. But again, some days are hysterically funny. I don't keep with all the regulations. I always try to make a couple of jokes. Especially if you're working late at night. Sometimes people on the lines are so funny, you'll just sit there and laugh and laugh until tears roll down your face. (Laughs.) Do I listen in on conversations? (Lowers voice) Some girls really do. I've never had the temptation to flip the switch. I don't know why. This company is the kind who watches you all the time. The supervisor does listen to you a lot. She can push a b.u.t.ton on this special console. Just to see if I'm pleasant enough, if I talk too much to the customers, if I'm charging the right amount, if I make a personal call. Ma Bell is listening. And you don't know. That's why it's smart to do the right thing most of the time. Keep your nose clean.

They never asked me to listen in. 'Cause they'd be reversing all the things they ever said: secrecy of communications, privacy for the customers. I don't think I would anyway. They can have the job.

Most people who have stayed as telephone operators are older women. Not too many young girls are there forever. Girls are more patient than older women. I was sitting next to one today. This man evidently left the phone and she was trying to get money from him. She yells, "Look at that b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" She started ringing real hard, "You come back here, you owe me money!" Really crabbily. If I did that, the supervisor would yell at me. But this lady's been there for twenty years. They're very permissive with their older ladies. A lot of them have ugly voices. But again, you've been working there twenty years and saying the same things for twenty years, my G.o.d, can you blame them? After twenty years you get real hard.

It's a hard feeling when everyone's in a hurry to talk to somebody else, but not to talk to you. Sometimes you get a feeling of need to talk to somebody. Somebody who wants to listen to you other than "Why didn't you get me the right number?"

It's something to run into somebody who says, "It's a nice day out, operator. How's your day, busy? Has it been a rough day?" You're so thankful for these people. You say, "Oh yes, it's been an awful day. Thank you for asking."

JACK HUNTER.

It was an accidental encounter, while he was in the city during a convention of the American Communications a.s.sociation. It was at the time of the Christmas season bombings of North Vietnam,. En route to a restaurant, the subject came up: "What else could President Nixon do? He had no alternative."

I'm a college professor. As a communications specialist, I train students to become more sensitive and aware of interpersonal communication-symbolic behavior, use of words, as well as nonverbal behavior. I try to ignite symbols in your mind, so we can come to a point of agreement on language. This is an invisible industry. Since the Second World War we've had phenomenal growth. There are seven-thousand-plus strong teachers in this discipline.

I'm high on the work because this is the way life is going to be-persuading people. We're communicating animals. We're persuadeable animals. It's not an unethical thing. It's not the black mustache and the black greasy hair bit. There is an unethical way-we're cognizant of the ways of demagogic persuasion-but we train students in the ethical way. Business communication is a very important field in our industry. We train people so they can humanize the spirit of both parties, the interviewer and the interviewee. In the first ten minutes of an interview, the interviewer has usually made up his mind. We find out the reasons. Through our kind of research we tell business: what you're doing is productive or counterproductive.

I'm talking about specialists, that we're accustomed to in the movie world. One guy blew up bridges, that's all he could do. Here's a guy who's an oral specialist or writing or print or electronics. We're all part of the family. n.o.body has a corner on communication.

Many Ph.D.s in the field of speech are now in business as personnel directors. I have good friends who are religious communicators. I had the opportunity to go with a bank in a Southern state as director of information. I would have overseen all the interoffice and intraoffice communication behavior-all the written behavior-to get the whole system smoother. And what happens? Profit. Happiness in job behavior. Getting what's deep down from them, getting their trust.

B. F. Skinner reaches over into our field. Good friends of mine study this kind of behavior so they can make better comments about interpersonal relations.h.i.+ps. Communication figures in our lives whether it's John Smith at the plant or President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. Friends of mine are studying conflict communication: how people communicate when they're under fire.

Take Jerry Friedheim.14 He appears to me to be a machine-dash-human voice of the Nixon administration on this very touchy issue. He is, in my perception, mechanical. His voice has the lack of emotion. It is like a voice typewriter. He produces. It's good. Heads have to keep cool. Nixon uses his people wisely and gets the information he needs to help him: what kinds of behavior can be attracted to what kinds of messages. In the past four years, he has so carefully softened the power of the press that it's being taken more lightly than ever before. That's why the Watergate affair was so delicately brushed aside by the American people.

Communications specialists do have a sense of power. People will argue it's a misuse of power. When a person has so much control over behavior, we're distrustful. We must learn how to become humane at the same time.

A PECKING ORDER.