Dolores Dante-
Dolores Dante worked as a waitress as a way to get “fast cash.” Her husband left her with lots of debts and three children. Dolores loved her job still and was never feeling shame towards it. In-fact, this job helped her pay off the debts and make it alright at home. However, she could not stray from the fact that, “everyone says all waitresses have broken homes” (Terkel 329). Dolores makes the point though that people have broken homes because they need to make money quickly to do work, not the other way around. Dolores said, “I have to be a waitress. How else can I learn about people? How else does the world come to me? I can’t go to everyone. So they have to come to me” (Terkel 330). It is almost as if Dolores has doubts when she says this. She says that she is proud to be a waitress, yet here it seems as if she almost wishes she wasn’t a waitress and doesn’t like the idea of it; like she has lost all other hope and dreams of getting money to support her family that she would resort to doing waitressing. Dolores made sure that she pleased everyone by giving them compliments, and she rearranged food in specific ways to help with its appeal, she wanted to make a good impression on people. Dolores talked about how people say that there is no good work done anymore and she said that she didn’t believe it. I strongly agree with her statement. She states, “The man at the top, who says the people beneath him are not doing a good job. He’s the one who always said, “you’re nothing.’…if it weren’t so demeaning, why didn’t she do it?” (Terkel 334). She worked her self so hard to get people to respect her, and people started to get jealous of her. Because of her jealousy, thoughts of guilt started to creep on her, but she still kept going. She served her neighborhood well, and herself with pride and dignity. That’s what hard work is all about.
In the story of Phil Stallings I got a different kind of feeling from this story than the last one that I read. This one, Phil did not seem to care much about his job, and really disliked it. Phil said, “I stand in one spot, about two- or three feet area, all night. The only time a person stops is when the line stops. We do about thirty two jobs per car, per unity….”(Terkel 354-55). This kind of job does not seem to be communicative like Dolores is and Phil does not get to express his feelings about how he feels about certain situations because of the working conditions he is working in. Phil did not like the intimidation or the pressure that came with his job; he especially did not like having to have to go up to someone of greater power to ask to do something because he was petrified that they would ignore him or make him hold it. The working environment is much different from Dolores in the since that she got to interact with her community and get to know people why Phil never got that chance because he was to scared to do it. When Phil talks about the foremen, I start to feel sorry for him and what he had to deal with. “When a man becomes a foreman, he has to forget about even being human, as far as feelings are concerned. You see a guy there bleeding to death. So what, buddy? That lines gotta keep goin’’” (Terkel 357). This kind of treatment is not right, and it made me think back to a video we watched in class when a group of women working inside a sweat shop got locked in when a fire started and they jumped out of the window and died. That kind of working conditions and how bad they are and how the bad working conditions have such a negative effect on your morale and outcome of life.
From these two posts it made me think a lot about the working life and the kind of environment that I want my life to be in. I want to be an English teacher, and I want the kids the be in a safe and fun learning environment. I don’t want them to feel like Phil, where they are restricted and feel like they can’t express themselves. I want to be proud of my job just like Dolores was, even if other people think I'm crazy for wanting to teach english.
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