Office worker

“ Well, if you don't want pay, I want some one with a head on his shoulders in this office. Any of the fellows in the outside office would be glad of the chance to get in here, but I want a man who understands what he is doing as well as I do myself. ”

“ I should have been unobservant indeed, if, with such masters as I have served under, I had not learnt something, in regard to the duties of a great employer of labour, from witnessing their ever-flowing courtesy; their care for those who came within their sphere; their anxiety, as the heads of departments, to recognize every exertion on the part of their subordinates; and their ready sympathy with the poor and the friendless, a sympathy which the vexations and harassments of office, and all those things that tend to turn a man’s thoughts in upon himself, could never subdue. ”

“ A clerk's never fresh in letters that the boss is going to see.
The men who stay in the office and plan are the brains of your business; those who go out and sell are its arms; and those who fill and deliver the orders are its legs. There's no use in the brains scheming and the arms gathering in, if the legs are going to deliver the goods with a kick. ”

“ His little office was very cosy, too; and the work of auditing the accounts of the most important customers of the house required accuracy but no amount of labor. It was an ideal occupation for a man of his years and limited training. ”

“ Considers all factors entering into office organization and management, with special emphasis on the human element. Chapters are devoted to office lay-out, selection and training of employees, rules and regulations, discipline, promotions, encouragement of savings, pension systems, discipline, welfare work, mechanical equipment of offices, records, mailing department, etc. ”

“ In every contact with authority, with their employer, with the police, with the School Board officer, in the hospital, or in the workhouse, they have equally the occasion to appreciate the light-hearted civility of the man in office ”

“ No cheery words are exchanged between men and manager, as the latter passes through the shop. A notice is often found in the office: “Workmen must wipe their feet before entering.” As a workman said to me: “No such direction is given to anyone who comes to place an order,” How much better to say to every one, “Please wipe your feet.” If a workman wants to see some one in authority he is kept hanging about, losing his piece-work earnings, or is brusquely told that the manager is engaged, while all the time he sees customers admitted with welcome to the office. ”

“ Nowhere excepting at the central office is it possible to sound our work, to know its breadth, its depth, the permanency of its interest among our members, and its growth among the people. Here we can gauge its dimensions. And, perhaps, the first sign, and certainly it is a most significant one, is that which every casual visitor at our business headquarters must observe at once, as he looks in upon the busy workers of the office; the work is too big for its quarters. ”

“ They are not elegant; the office is a big barn of a place, crowded full of desks, where we sit and write from eight in the morning until any hour at night when it occurs to the boss to tell us we can go. ”

“ In the office, for the sake of discipline, I frequently adopt a querulous manner, finding it necessary in dealing with office-boys, but the moment I leave shop behind me I become a different individual entirely, and have been called a moteless sunbeam by those who have seen only that side of my character. ”

“ As he walks to the office in his tall hat and good overcoat, with a smart umbrella, curses not loud but deep are muttered against him by members loitering in search of work, and as these get jobs in other towns they spread stories of his arrogance and haughtiness. ”

“ Neatness, accuracy, precision, the doing again and again of constantly recurring tasks, all find their place and use in the housekeeper's routine. The calm atmosphere of the well-kept office even when typewriters and calculating machines are rattling is a better preparation for an orderly home than the rush of the department store or the factory. ”

“ The factory employee, the shop assistant, the office clerk, the most typical members of modern industrial society, find an oppressive burden of uninteresting order, of mechanism, in their working day. ”

“ Offices.—The numerous office-buildings that have arisen so rapidly in recent years in the cities also have large corps of women workers. They have personal relations with employers much more frequently, for there are thousands of offices where a few stenographers or even a single secretary are sufficient. Office work is skilled labor, is better paid, and attracts women of better attainments and higher ideals than in department store or factory. ”

“ XIII. Let all persons entrusted with office attend equally to their functions. Owing to their illness or to their being sent on missions, their work may sometimes be neglected. But whenever they become able to attend to business, let them be as accommodating as if they had cognizance of it from before, and not hinder public affairs on the score of their not having had to do with them. ”

“ From the nature of their employment, special agents are constantly brought in contact with the most intelligent and prominent men in the community, who justly expect to find the post-office department represented by men of gentlemanly bearing, fair education, correct deportment, and sound discretion. ”

“ Always do business with the boss. Refuse to talk to all office boys, get friendly with the lady stenographer, if there is one, but do all business with the one at the head—and no other! This motto has saved me no end of time which has been spent in healthy exercise under my own roof and Ma's eagle eye, which otherwise might have wore out the seats of outside-office chairs. ”

“ My duties required me to report at the office at 10 in the morning and remain there until 4 in the afternoon. I went along in the even tenor of my way for six months, during which time my husband was searching for employment. He came to me one day, the first time that he had been in the office since my entrance there, to tell me that he had a position offered him, but that he must acknowledge [149] that he was married, as the gentleman who wished to employ him could not engage a single man. ”

“ You will find that you have nothing to do but walk up to the office like a gentleman, as you are, (if you be not a lady,) send in your card, state your wishes, and you will not only obtain the wished permission, but the offer of a proper equipment, and candles, and be directed to a competent guide and cicerone. ”

“ Even the chiefs’ outside associates were tremendous, buyers and diplomatic representatives; big-chested men with watch-chains across their beautiful tight waistcoats. And like envoys extraordinary were the efficiency experts whom Mr. Pemberton occasionally had in to speed up the work a bit more beyond the point of human endurance.... One of these experts, a smiling and pale-haired young man who talked to Mr. Ross about the new poetry, arranged to have office-boys go about with trays of water-glasses at ten, twelve, two, and four. ”

“ The office is perhaps a somewhat peculiar as well as delicate one, and for the relief of any of the weaker brethren who may find in this a singular outlet for monastic energy, and it may be even stumble thereat, I may perhaps explain a little further the circumstances out of which such a state of things have arisen. The problem is in reality a simple one. ”

“ In some offices, especially in those where large amounts of money are stored or handled, there are door men in uniform and often plain clothes huskies near the entrances to protect the people (and the money) on the inside from cranks and crooks and criminals. In others, a physician's office, for instance, or any small office where the people who are likely to come are of the gentler sort, a young girl with a pleasing manner will do just as well as and perhaps better than any one else. ”

“ Your immejit boss—the office-manager—is all right, but the secretary of the company is always pussy-footing around, and if you’re ever having any trouble with your stuff when old plush-ears is in sight, keep on typing fast, no matter what you put down. ”

“ But, as a general rule, we find their employees anything but happy. Almost without exception they feel that their tenure of office hangs by the slenderest of threads and that it is necessary to regard all of their fellow employees with suspicion. Some men enjoy working in this fevered atmosphere. If you are one of them, there are excellent opportunities for you in the employ of a man of this type. ”

“ When there were rumors of “a change,” of “a cut-down in the force,” every person on the office floor watched the chiefs as they assembled to go out to lunch together—big, florid, shaven, large-chinned men, talking easily, healthy from motoring and golf, able in a moment’s conference at lunch to “shift the policy” and to bring instant poverty to the families of forty clerks or four hundred workmen in the shops. When they jovially entered the elevator together, some high-strung stenographer would rush over to one of the older women to weep and be comforted.... ”

“ In those firms which manufacture a large range of machinery, the drawing-office staff is separated into departments, each under its own chief, and there is seldom any transference of men from one to another. ”

“ The clerk goes to his office, the workman to his shop, the artisan to his loft, the merchant to his warehouse, the professional to his cabinet, and the official to his duty;26117 they are devoted, first of all, to their pursuits, to their daily bread, to the discharge of their obligations, to their own advancement, to their families, and to their pleasures; to provide for these things the day is not too long. ”

“ Duties of Office Employes. Each clerk in the office should have his work clearly defined. If specialization is profitable in the shop, it is equally so in the office. Every man who has been responsible for the management of an office will agree with us that in no other branch of business is there a greater tendency to allow work to get behind.
Lack of system is mainly responsible for this state of affairs. While his duties may be more or less clearly defined, the work of the average office clerk does not follow any well defined plan. ”

“ Of course, our paper has not been contrary; but we have noticed a good many times—every one in the office has noticed it, the boys and girls in the back-office, and the boys and girls in the front-office—that whenever we take a stand for anything, say for closing the stores at six o'clock, the General swings the Statesman into line against it. If he has done it once he has done it fifty times in the last ten years ”

“ Every year he is allowed a fortnight's holiday, without any deduction from his pay; many spare hours each day he may devote to other pursuits, for if, when at work at the office, his hours of duty exceed eight hours daily, he is at full liberty to ask for investigation and redress. ”

“ His character filters down through the ranks. If he is a rough-and-tumble sort of person the office is likely to be that kind of place; if he is quiet and mannerly the chances are that the office will be quiet and mannerly. ”

“ Why, the very waiting room of the employer's ordinary office is a much more cosy and pleasant place than the homes of many of the most [Pg 136] industrious workers of England. I plead that the elements of the human order should begin to pervade the relations of the workshop, that the workman should be less of a drudge and more of a human asset than he has been, that he should be brought into partnership in the undertaking and in the management ”

“ Generally speaking the chief despatcher's recommendation is enough to place a man in his office; and as I had always believed in the rule of seniority, I wanted to appoint the third trick man to the second trick, make the day copy operator third trick man, and call in a new copy operator to replace the night man who would be promoted to the day job. ”

“ The office has its hardships. Everything is on a business basis, and there is little allowance for feelings or disposition. There are days when trials multiply and an atmosphere of irritation prevails; there are seasons when the constant rush creates a wearing nervous tension, and other seasons, when business is so poor that occasionally there are breakdowns of health or moral rectitude; but on the whole the office presents a simpler industrial problem than the factory or the store. ”

“ Truax doesn’t, but you do know—that the whole office system makes pale, timid, nervous people out of all the clerks—”
“But, good heavens! child, the employers have just as hard a time. Talk about being nervous! Take it in our game. The salesman does the missionary work, but the employer is the one who has to worry. Take some big deal that seems just about to get across—and then falls through just when you reach for the contract and draw a breath of relief. ”

“ A newspaper office is one of the few business establishments in which the human machinery is at work the whole twenty-four hours round. The business department, which requires the same staff as is needed in an insurance office or bank, starts its operations, as a rule, at nine in the morning, when the heads and clerks of the advertising, circulation, and other departments assemble. ”

“ In 1864 they were coolly informed that there were plenty of people outside ready to step inside at the same salary. The post-office would present a strange appearance if this system was adopted, for the duties of the office are not learned in a day. Under former administrations it was the chief object of men in power to pay their employees living wages and reward honesty, sobriety, and attention to business by preferment. ”

“ That is all, except that to-morrow notices will be posted in every department stating that my office door is open to any man who works for me—any man may come to me with complaint or with suggestion at any time. The notices will state that I want suggestions, and that any man who can bring me an idea that will improve his work or the work in his department or in the plant will be paid for it according to its value. In short, I want the co-operation of every man who draws wages from this concern.... ”