A Working Stiff's Manifesto Read Online Free Page B

shirt she told me to exchange during our first meeting. After nine days, I get my first paycheck, over $400 for a forty-hour week, and rush out and buy an oxford. I’m one of the team.
    My regular customers take to me. One of them brings me a pen, an expensive ink pen with elegant designs on it. He owns a company that makes them, he tells me. Later in the day, I am over at the coffee stand and notice that the Market sells those pens. Maybe his company sells them to the Market, or maybe the guy’s just bringing me some of the Market’s stock as a gift. I don’t know. At any rate, it’s the thought that counts.
    A few evenings later, I’m minding my own business behind the fish stand. It has been a slow day, a clock-watching day, and I am eating a chocolate bar while doing inventory. Zoe comes back behind the stand.
    â€œHi,” she says brusquely. “Where’d you get that chocolate bar?”
    â€œI bought it,” I say. I have carefully read the Market policy on eating lunch and taking breaks and cigarette smoking, all of which they’d prefer you didn’t do, but if you must, there are ten pages of guidelines on exactly how. I know them all by heart. I’m a lunch-eating, break-taking, cigarette-smoking machine, seeing as I’m stuck back here in a very unbusy store by myself for eight hours at a time. I know that all items bought from the store by employees during their shift have to be accompanied by a receipt. “I have my receipt right here.”
    She nods without looking at it. “Where did you get this pen?”
    â€œA customer gave it to me.”
    â€œHe gave it to you?” Her eyes narrow with suspicion.
    â€œHe said he owns the factory where they’re made.”
    â€œThis is one of our pens.”
    â€œHe gave it to me.”
    â€œDo you have a receipt?”
    â€œHe didn’t give me one.”
    She looks at me as if I am the worst-lying pen-stealer she has ever encountered, and shrugs and walks off.
    After that, things go downhill quickly. The next day, we get a rare rush, seven or eight people at the stand at a time. I have everything organized, waiting on people as quickly as I can. They have formed a line, and I get them one at a time. Zoe comes up to the stand.
    â€œWait on that lady,” she tells me, pointing at an ill-tempered older woman, as I am wrapping an order for the lady in front of her. I assume Zoe will finish wrapping the order, so I put it down and approach the next lady.
    â€œCan I help you?” I ask the ill-tempered one.
    â€œYes, I’d like two pounds of salmon steak.”
    â€œHey!” yells the one I was just waiting on. I look around and realize that Zoe has wandered away, but is still watching me. The lady’s unwrapped order is sitting where I left it. I go over and start wrapping again.
    â€œWhy did you ask me if you could help me before you were finished with her?” howls the ill-tempered one.
    â€œAll I want is my order,” the one waiting for the wrapped package cries out with exaggerated patience. Other ladies at the back of the line start rolling their eyes and wandering off.
    After it is quiet again, Zoe comes up to me. “I don’t think you should be alone back here,” she tells me. “You can’t handle it by yourself. I’ll tell Ippolito.” She looks at me a moment. “Is that an oxford?”
    I’m not sure exactly what I’ve done to draw her attention, but she’s got her teeth in and she won’t let go. She starts with me on a daily basis.
    â€œYou’d better get back there,” she tells me one day when I’m going out to smoke. “We’ve got customers coming in.”
    I’ve been back there for five hours and sold one piece of fish. I have already asked one of the butchers to watch my stand for a few minutes. We take turns. When I come back, he goes.
    â€œRocker’s back there,” I