“All I think on is your comfort, yes?”
“Don't get gray over it!”
Nor will I forget that exhibition of the boss's ideas of scientific management. Nothing in the factory was ever where anyone could find it. It almost drove me crazy. What was my joy then when one day the boss told me to put the spools in order. There was a mess of every-colored spool, mixed with every other color, tangled ends, dust, buttons, loose snappers, more dust, beads, more spools, more dust. A certain color was wanted by a stitcher. There was nothing to do but paw. The spool, like as not, would be so dusty it would take blowings and wipings on your skirt before it could be discovered whether the color was blue or black. I tied my head in tissue paper and sat down to the dusty job of sorting those spools. Laboriously I got all the blacks together and in one box. Laboriously all the whites. That exhausted all the boxes I could lay hands on. I hunted up the boss. “I can't do that spool job decent if I ain't got no boxes to put the different colors in.”
“Boxes, boxes! What for you want boxes?”
“For the spools.”
“'Ain't you got no boxes?”
“'Ain't got another one.”
He hustled around to the spool shelves where I was working.
“Ach, boxes! Here are two boxes. What more you want?”
Majestically, energetically, he dumped my black spools out of one box, my white spools out of the other—dumped them back with a flourish into the mess of unassorted dust and colors.