Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do is a 1974 nonfiction book by the oral historian and radio broadcaster Studs Terkel. Working investigates the meaning of work for different people under different circumstances, showing it can vary in importance. The book also reflects Terkel's general idea that work can be difficult but still provides meaning for workers. It is an exploration of what makes work meaningful for people in all walks of life, from Lovin' Al the parking valet, Dolores the waitress, the fireman, to the business executive. The narrative moves through mundane details, emotional truths, and existential questioning.

Structure

Following a preface, a foreword, and an introduction, the volume is divided into nine "books," each of which contains one or more subsections that provide several accounts of working people's jobs and lives. These books tie their diverse content together with themes. These themes take the form of subtitles. Some books have only one theme (the theme of Book One is "Working the Land"); others have several.

Book One

Book One contains stories by three newspaper delivery boys, a farmer, a farm worker, a farm woman, a deep miner and his wife, a strip miner, and a heavy equipment operator. Here is a sample:

Book Two

Book Two features narratives from a receptionist, a hotel switchboard operator, a telephone operator, a professor of communications, an airline stewardess, an airline reservationist, a model, an executive secretary, a sex worker, a writer/producer, a copy chief, two actors, a press agent, an installment dealer, and a telephone solicitor. Here is a sample:

Book Three

Book Three has stories by a sanitation truck driver, a garbage man, a washroom attendant, a factory mechanic, a domestic worker, a janitor, a doorman, two policemen, an industrial investigator, a photographer, and a film critic. Here is a sample:

Book Four

Book Four tells the stories of two spot-welders, a utility man, a stock chaser, a plant manager, a general foreman, a local union president, two cabdrivers, a bus driver, an interstate truckdriver, a car hiker, and a car salesman. Here is a sample:

Book Five

Book Five narrates the tales of a barber, a hair stylist, a saleswoman, a dentist, a hotel clerk, a bar pianist, an elevator starter, an ex-salesman, a bank teller, an auditor, an organizer, an order filler in a shoe factory, a mail carrier, a gas meter reader, a supermarket box boy, a supermarket checker, a skycap, a felter in a luggage factory, a waitress, and two housewives. Here is a sample:

Book Six

Book Six contains the stories of a bookbinder, a pharmacist, a piano tuner, a realty broker, a yacht broker, two stockbrokers, a project coordinator, a government relations coordinator, a process clerk, and an organizer. Here is a sample:

Book Seven

Book Seven's narratives involve those of a jockey, a baseball player, a sports press agent, a tennis player, a hockey player, a football coach, a radio executive, a factory owner, a bank audit department head, an ex-boss, the ex-boss' daughter, an ex-president of a conglomerate/consultant, "Ma and Pa Courage," and three retirees. Here is a sample:

Book Eight

Book Eight's stories are about a copy boy, a publisher, a proofreader, a department store manager, a jazz musician, an executive, the director of a bakery cooperative, a hospital aide, a baby nurse, a public school teacher, an alternative school teacher, an occupational therapist, a patient's representative, a practical nurse in an old people's home, a memorial counselor, and a grave digger. Here is a sample:

Book Nine

Book Nine recounts the narratives of a tree nursery attendant, a carpenter/poet, an editor, an industrial designer, a nun to naprapath, an ex-salesman/ farmer, a lawyer, a librarian, a stone cutter, a service station owner, the service station's son and partner, a steelworker, the steelworker's son (a priest), an adult education teacher, a freight elevator operator, a policeman, and a fireman. Here is a sample:

Famous names

Among the many who speak their minds about their work and their lives are baseball player Steve Hamilton ("To be perfectly honest with you, I'm ready to quit"), actor Rip Torn ("I don't have any contempt for people who do commercials"), football coach George Allen ("You have to put a priority on everything you do each day"), film critic Pauline Kael, and hockey player Eric Nesterenko.

General themes

As the foreword to the book points out, "Mr. Terkel found, work was a search, sometimes successful, sometimes not, 'for daily meaning as well as daily bread'.... The oral histories in Working are wistful dispatches from a distant era...when management practices and computers were just beginning to transform the American workplace. In the last thirty years, productivity has soared but job satisfaction has plummeted. It is hard to read Working without wondering what has gone wrong."

Spinoffs and adaptations

A bestseller when first published in 1974, the book also inspired the Broadway musical of the same title, and a similar book edited thirty years later by a team (mainly John Bowe, Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter), Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. In May 2009 Harvey Pekar's graphic novel adaptation was released by The New Press, edited by Paul Buhle, with art by Sharon Rudahl, Terry LaBan, Gary Dumm, Peter Gullerud, Pablo G. Callejo, et al.

References in popular culture

In July 2009, The Second City ETC opened their 33rd revue, Studs Terkel's Not Working, honoring the writer in the year following his death. The revue, like Terkel's book, focused on the lives of ordinary people. Singer/songwriter James Taylor wrote a song called "Millworker" which was released on his 1979 album Flag. On his 2002 DVD Pull Over, Taylor explains that a story about a woman in a shoe manufacturing plant in Massachusetts, described in the book, inspired the song. In the television series The Facts of Life, Working is one of the books parents wanted to ban in the episode "Read No Evil". On Sept. 5, 2019, podcast The Radio Diaries, produced by Radiotopia on PRX, released an episode called "The Working Tapes of Studs Terkel." In it, Terkel's taped interviews with working people are played and examined. On April 27, 2023, Netflix announced a limited series titled "Working: What We Do All Day" (hosted by Barack Obama), which is inspired by this book.