Feigenbaum pawed the air with his right hand and sat down ponderously.
"You ain't got nothing on me, Birsky," he said. "Honestly, if you would be running a drygoods store—and especially a chain of drygoods stores like I got it, understand me—every saleswoman acts like a designer, only worser yet. Do you know what is the latest craze with them girls?"
He emitted a tremulous sigh before answering his own rhetorical question.
"Welfare work!" he continued. "Restrooms and lunchrooms, mit a trained nurse and Gott weiss was noch! Did you ever hear the like, Birsky?—I should go to work and give them girls a restroom! I says to Miss McGivney, my store superintendent in Cordova, I says: 'If the girls wants to rest,' I says, 'they should go home,' I says. 'Here we pay 'em to work, not to rest,' I says."
He paused for breath and wiped away an indignant moisture from his forehead.
"In my Bridgetown store they ain't kicking at all," he went on; "aber in my Cordova store—that's different again. There I got that meshugganeh Eschenbach to deal with; which, considering the monkey business which goes on in that feller's place, y'understand, it's a wonder to me that they got any time to attend to business at all. Two people he's got working for him there—a man and a woman—which does nothing but look after this here welfare Närrischkeit."
"Go away!" Birsky exclaimed. "You don't say so!"
"The man used to was a Spieler from baseball," Feigenbaum continued; "and him and Eschenbach fixes up a ball team from the clerks and delivery-wagon drivers, which they could lick even a lot of loafers which makes a business of baseball already."
Birsky waggled his head from side to side and made incoherent sounds through his nose by way of expressing his sympathy.
"And yet," Feigenbaum continued, "with all Eschenbach's craziness about baseball and charities, Birsky, he does a big business there in Cordova, which I wish I could say the same. Honestly, Birsky, such a mean lot of salespeople which I got it in Cordova, y'understand, you wouldn't believe at all. They are all the time at doggerheads with me."