Working - Studs Terkel

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Even though the stories that the people tell in Working are from 1971 or earlier, I can (and I am sure most people can) relate to their experiences. Terkel does an excellent job at getting these people to open up and tell us vivid stories that allows us understand them and feel for them. He interviews all kinds of people in all kinds of jobs, from a model to a prostitute, and he shows us that they are not that different. The stories of the model and the call girl/prostitute, told by Jill Torrance and Roberta Victor, respectively, have many similarities these jobs have. For instance, Jill mentions that the only reason she became a model was because of the money, she could not turn it down. She recollects when she first started out..."I had fifty cents in my pocket when I got my first job. I worked two hours and made sixty dollars. It was incredible to me...I was getting all this money for smiling and pinning a flower on a guy" (53). This is very similar to Roberta's experience when she first became a call girl, as she says, "Here I was doing absolutely nothing, feeling nothing, and in twenty minutes I was going to walk out with fifty dollars in my pocket. That just made me feel absolutely marvelous" (59). They both start out for the same reasons and they live the glamour life, but soon enough they also both realize later on how fake and objectified they feel. They both feel worthless and they realized that the money is not worth it anymore and the glamour life is not what they thought it would be. After reading both of them, one also realizes how real of a job being a prostitute is and how crappy of a job being a model is.













Terkel provides his readers a glimpse into all areas of the American workforce and all areas of society. It is inspiring, in the way that it allows people to see that they are not alone, and that others share their pains, whether it be sexual harassment or a lung disease. This book allows us to collectively complain about the workforce, but at the same time we realize that everyone in all types of jobs complain about their jobs. So, we don't feel that bad because almost everyone hates some aspect of their work.