Further Foolishness

Ch. 8 - Every Man and his Friends

Mr. Crunch's Portrait Gallery (as Edited from his Private Thoughts)

(I) HIS VIEWS ON HIS EMPLOYER

A mean man. I say it, of course, without any prejudice,

and without the slightest malice. But the man is mean.

Small, I think, is the word. I am not thinking, of course,

of my own salary. It is not a matter that I would care

to refer to; though, as a matter of fact, one would think

that after fifteen years of work an application for an

increase of five hundred dollars is the kind of thing

that any man ought to be glad to meet half-way. Not that

I bear the man any malice for it. None. If he died

to-morrow, no one would regret his death as genuinely as

I would: if he fell into the river and got drowned, or

if he fell into a sewer and suffocated, or if he got

burned to death in a gas explosion (there are a lot of

things that might happen to him), I should feel genuinely

sorry to see him cut off.

But what strikes me more than the man's smallness is his

incompetence. The man is absolutely no good. It's not a

thing that I would say outside: as a matter of fact I

deny it every time I hear it, though every man in town

knows it. How that man ever got the position he has is

more than I can tell. And, as for holding it, he couldn't

hold it half a day if it weren't that the rest of us in

the office do practically everything for him.

Why, I've seen him send out letters (I wouldn't say this

to anyone outside, of course, and I wouldn't like to have

it repeated)--letters with, actually, mistakes in English.

Think of it, in English! Ask his stenographer.

I often wonder why I go on working for him. There are

dozens of other companies that would give anything to

get me. Only the other day--it's not ten years ago--I

had an offer, or practically an offer, to go to Japan

selling Bibles. I often wish now I had taken it. I believe

I'd like the Japanese. They're gentlemen, the Japanese.

They wouldn't turn a man down after slaving away for

fifteen years.

I often think I'll quit him. I say to my wife that that

man had better not provoke me too far; or some day I'll

just step into his office and tell him exactly what I

think of him. I'd like to. I often say it over to myself

in the street car coming home.

He'd better be careful, that's all.