She laughed. “Well, that’s one way.”
“I tell you, I’ve given up trying to make it all fit together like clockwork. Jobs in a store aren’t alike. Salespersons are one thing, and you can find out exactly what they’re worth in dollars and cents and pay them what they earn. But when they don’t sell, it’s different. What I’m going to do is to decide on basic wages for all the employees who don’t sell—just about enough to get along on. And then pull the really good work out of them with a bonus—I’ll call it a bonus. It’s really a sort of disguised fine for poor work....”
“I wish you’d start at the beginning and get somewhere,” said his wife rigorously. “If I put woolly statements like that into my advertising copy....”
“Well, here’s the idea. Take the delivery crews for example.—There’s only one of them now, of course, but there are going to be more soon. I offer them—oh, anything you like, twelve or fifteen dollars a week. That much they’re sure of until they’re fired, no matter how they do their work! ‘But if you do your work perfectly,’ I tell ’em, ‘there’s ten dollars a week more,’ or something like that—I haven’t made up my mind about the details.... ‘There’s ten dollars apiece for each of you if you get through the week with a perfect record.’—No, that doesn’t put emphasis enough on team spirit; I’ll make it ten or fifteen for the crew to divide—that’ll give them an incentive for jacking each other up. We put the money in dimes and quarters in a box with a glass cover where they can look at it. Then every time they run without oil, or with a dirty car, or lose a package, or let a friend ride with them, out comes a dollar or a quarter or fifty cents, depending on how serious the case may be. Don’t you just bet when they see their bonus shrinking before their eyes they’ll buck up and try? Of course I couldn’t use such a raw line with the better class—the accounting department, for instance, but something with the same idea.—By the way, that reminds me. I had to let Lester Knapp go—remember him? That dyspeptic gloom, second desk on the left as you go in.”
Mrs. Willing nodded. “I don’t know that I ever noticed him, but I’ve heard about him through the St. Peter’s women. I thought you said you could manage.”
“I never really thought that. I knew I couldn’t right along. But I tell you, Nell, the truth is I’m soft when it comes to telling folks they can go. I hate to do it! I kidded myself into thinking Knapp might buck up. But it wouldn’t do. For one thing Bronson can’t stand him and I’ve got to back up my heads of departments. They’ve got to like their help or they can’t get any work out of them.” He sat forward in his chair and began playing with his watch chain.
“How did Mr. Knapp take it?”
“Oh, very decently—too decently! It made it all the harder. He admitted, when I asked him, that his work didn’t interest him—that he hated it. When I half-way offered to give him a try at the selling end, he said he was sure he wouldn’t like it any better,—was sure he wouldn’t do even so well there. He said he knew he’d hate selling. Then when I put it up to him whether he thought a man can ever do good work if he doesn’t like his job, he didn’t say a thing, just kept getting whiter and whiter, and listened and listened. I did my best to let him down easy. Thanks of the firm for long and faithful service, take plenty of time to look for something else, no hurry. But it was no go. He’s got plenty of brains of a queer sort, enough to see through that sort of talk. It was damned unpleasant. He has a very uncomfortable personality anyhow. Something about him that rubs you the wrong way.” His voice was sharp with personal discomfort. He looked exasperated and aggrieved.
Out of her experience of his world and her knowledge of him, his wife’s sympathy was instant. “It is hard on you having all those uncomfortable personal relations!” she said. “It always seems unfair that I can stay here at home with the children and draw a salary for writing advertisements that I love to do without sharing any of the dirty work.”
“It’s no joke,” he agreed rather somberly. He looked at his watch. “Will I have time for a cigar before dinner?” he asked.