Progressive Wednesday

Doing Work for Hard-Working Families: Tell

Tell:

Studs Terkel is a fan-favorite of ours. He's best known as the oral historian behind the phenomenal and revelatory book Working. In Working, Terkel interviews folks from all walks of not so much life but work, then removes his questions, and moves the answers around until he's successfully created an accurate first-person narrative using only the words of the interviewee.

As with many peel-your-eyelids-back books, he's inspired us to do the same, or rather, similar. Below you'll find eleven questions. If you're feeling so inclined, we'd love it if you'd answer some or all of them as thoroughly as possible. We'll “edit– your responses slightly, and then publish them on our site so that folks can learn more about their fellow readers, and at the same time, learn more about what it means to work in America. The more we know, the more we can empathize.

There's one small other thing we ought to mention. We'll do everything we can (in addition to whatever you'd like to do) to keep these as anonymous as possible (so that there's no potential repercussions at all for you at work.) We're itching to read your stories (we mean “itching– metaphorically; we don't actually have any rashes to speak of – ¦knock on wood).

- – - – -

• What's your current job?
• How did you start in this field and how long have you held this job?
• Tell us one (or two or three– ¦) true stories that typify working where you do.
• Do you enjoy your work? Why or why not?
• Did you think you'd end up doing this job? Why or why not?
• What are the hazards (physical, intellectual, emotion) of your job?
• What are the perks of your job?
• What's the best thing that's ever happened at work?
• What's the worst thing that's ever happened at work?
• If you could change three things about your job, what would they be? Why?
• What previous jobs have you held?