The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 19
No matter what occupation a girl may choose as a means of self-support, certain personal qualifications and business-like attributes are essential to her success. Mere training for a trade or profession, or mere education along technical or theoretical lines, will count for little if the girl does not possess the ability to employ her knowledge in the practical, business-like way.
The industrial, commercial or professional world needs the well-trained girl; yes, but more it needs the girl who has good common sense, the girl who is sincere, loyal and capable of concentrating on the work at hand.
And the greatest of these gifts is sincerity which is built upon common sense and which leads to loyalty and concentration.
When you first enter the business world you will meet many fellow-workers who pretend to do big things, to work hard and to have their employers' interest at heart, when, in reality,
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they are simply making a superficial showing, and they are not working, not putting heart and soul into their work.
Be not deceived by their methods. Be sincere. Do your work so that each night as you pass the timekeeper or the cage in which sits the ule you can say in your heart: "To-day I have earned all that Mr. Blank pays me—and more."
These words are a satisfying chant, but if you simply make a pretense at working, there will be no song on your lips; rather a shaky feeling in your knees and a sinking in your heart not pleasant to feel. Whenever a girl tells me that she has an "easy" position, I mark her for a girl doomed for early dismissal. It is never really easy to earn your salary and incidentally work toward promotion.
Perhaps you do not understand just what I mean by sincerity in work, so let me give youa few concrete examples.
When you were in school you had to make a certain average in order to secure promotion. If you were not sincere in your work, when taking an examination you carefully selected the questions you could answer, and, once sure of making the average, you did not worry about the ones you had to leave unanswered.
Now that you are going into business, you think that here you can employ the same methods. You will start at five or six dollars a week doing simple, humble tasks; and you will do them just well enough so that your employer or the head of your department will not find fault with you. You will do what you are paid for—and not one jot more. You will not arrive at the store one minute ahead of time, and your eye will be on the clock-dial when the afternoon shadows begin to fall.
Not how much you can do in a day, but how little and still hold your position! Is this to be your gospel? You are not lazy, but soon you will belong to the great army of workers who are afraid of being imposed upon by their employers. You are getting ready to join the legions of underpaid girls and women.
Make no mistake about your abilities when first you are paid wages. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred you will not begin to earn what your employer pays you, I do not care how small the salary. Your blunders will cost him money or customers. Your inexperience and the necessity for showing you how to do things in the firm's way will cost the time and the energy of some well-paid employee placed over you in authority. Your employer will not receive any returns for what he pays you for many, many weeks.
Late one afternoon I receive a letter from an out-of-town friend.
"Send me by return mail, please, five yards of percaline to line this silk."
"This silk" was an exqusite shade of pale green.
I rushed to the nearest store—the green silk was for a bridesmaid's frock, and the wedding day at hand—and I offered the bit of shimmery silk to a clerk.
"Five yards of percaline to match that, please."
"We ain't got any percaline like that," she said, listlessly dropping my sample. My glance traveled up and down the shelving, and lighted on a piece of palest green lining.
"What is that third bolt from the top?"
"That ain't percaline—it's shimmer satin."
"Well, I'd like to see it."
"It costs two cents more a yard than percaline," replied the clerk, not offering to take down the bolt, "and it ain't so heavy."
"I want to see it," I replied firmly, and I got it, not because of the clerk, but in spite of her.
Now, if she had been sincere in her work, if she had wanted to pay her employer for training her to earn her own living, she would have said to me:
"We have no percaline that shade, but I can give you a much better and softer lining at only a few cents more a yard."
But she was just hoping that I would not buy. She wanted to make up her book and be ready to reach for her gloves and purse the instant the first bell rang.
Another instance:
"I can't understand why Jennie does not get along," murmured the mother of three girls, all wage-earners. "She was the brightest of my girls in school, always just slid from class to class without any apparent effort, while both Elizabeth and Helen had to work like Trojans, but now both of the tortoises are outstripping the hare. Jennie has been at Leyland's two years, and has had her salary raised just once, and that only a dollar a week."
This mother did not realize that the question which she propounded in one breath she answered with the next.
"She always slid from class to class without apparent effort."
That is the answer!
Jennie tried to introduce into the business world the same methods she had pursued at school. She was one of the clever girls who can skim through a lesson just before recitation hour, snatch at important points, and promptly forget all about them within an hour after school. She had a quick memory, but not a dependable, reliable one.
She never did anything thoroughly. What she did study failed to remain with her as permanent knowledge. She was distinctly superficial, and yet she always made a good appearance in her class. Teachers shook their heads and said it was a pity to see good gray matter wasted, but fellow-pupils envied her the faculty for securing results without real work.
For a time these tactics will make a good impression in business, but the time will be short. The girl who remembers orders for two or three days, but has to be reminded of them thereafter at regular intervals never scores a permanent success. The girl who writes instructions on a dependable memory, with an indelible pencil, lasts.
The girl who listens to about half the suggestions offered by her chief and then interrupts him: "Oh, yes, I understand perfectly. You want it done so-and-so," makes a very good first impression. The chief says to himself: "There's the sort of girl I like to have around. You don't have to furnish a diagram with your explanations."
But by and by he finds that this girl has only half grasped his instructions, while another girl who asked for fuller explanations was reinforcing her memory and had fully grasped the meaning.
The girl who "just slides through" never knows her stock if she is clerking; never has her employer's business terms at her finger-tips if she is a stenographer; never takes the pains to find out why she is asked to do certain things in a certain way if she is employed in a factory.
She gives merely a superficial effect of being tremendously interested in her work. In reality she is thinking of something else. In the end it is the something else, not the work, that wins out.
Loyalty is a splendid business asset. It wins the respect and appreciation of your employer, while disloyalty causes dismissal and loss of self-respect.
It is not always easy to be loyal to your employer, especially if you are an inexperienced girl or woman.
Somehow, in the average man there exists an inborn sense of business honor. He rather prides himself on being silent about the affairs of the man or the firm for whom he works. He can accept reprimands without feeling a mad desire to retaliate by "knocking" his employers the first time their backs are turned.
On the other hand, women must acquire this sense of honor. Some do. Others talk too much, especally when smarting under a rebuke more or less deserved. Without meaning to be disloyal to employers, they steer close to the shoals of petty, dishonorable gossip, not realizing that the employee who is worth good money to her firm is the one who feels that the firm's interests are hers, and who, therefore, is close-mouthed. Two girls, in ankle-length skirts, rode in an elevator with me not long ago, talking rather loudly, as inexperienced girls will. Said the blonde:
"How'd you like your new place?"
"Fine! Nothing to do hardly," replied the brunette. "I'm going to bring down a book from the library to-morrow. Say, you'd just die if you'd see him trying to find something for me to do. I don't see why he wants a stenographer, anyhow. Honest, it nearly gives me heart-failure when he dictates a letter. Wouldn't you hate to be married to a young lawyer?"
Then they both giggled, and several men in the car smiled.
That girl did not realize that in thus chattering of her employer's affairs in a public place she was disloyal to the man who paid her salary, but she was, just the same—disloyal, silly and unwomanly. Perhaps that struggling young lawyer kept a stenographer as part of the little business drama of keeping up appearances. Perhaps he hoped to secure business from the very men in the building who were riding in the ear with his foolish stenographer.
If you feel that you must laugh at your chief, wait until you are alone with your mirror or safely buried in the bosom of your family. I admit that some employers are more or less of a joke, but don't jest about them in public or where eavesdroppers may hear your careless words and carry them further, to do harm to your employer and eventually to yourself. Your employer is straining every nerve to make his business succeed. Perhaps he is not working in just the right way, but it is not your place to shout this fact from the house-tops. Perhaps in time he may see the error of his methods and work out his business salvation on different lines. In the meantime if the you mean to accept a salary at his hands, be loyal to his interests, and do not criticize him to his friends or his rivals.
When you feel inclined to be disloyal, stop and figure on what you owe your employer.
Start your business career by honestly appreciating the privilege of being paid a salary during your training. The modern boy or girl knows little enough about being trained for work. In the old days of apprentices for trades, boys and girls worked from two to seven years for nothing or for board and lodging, in order to be prepared properly for wage-earning. To-day many girls with absolutely no equipment seem to think that employers ought to be glad to secure their inexperienced services.
Just get that idea out of your head. Bear in mind that the debt is all on your side. Be sincerely grateful to the man who gives you a chance to prove your worth. You have then taken the first step on the pathway of success. In fact, your entire business future depends upon your understanding perfectly the relation between employer and employee.
Why are you going to work?
Because you need money! Otherwise do not go to work, because you will be a drone and a discredit to your sex in the wage-earning field. Moreover, you will be occupying a place that belongs to some girl who must work.
Why is your employer paying you wages?
Because he has work to be done. If you cannot do that work, he has a perfect right to find some one who can do it. Remember, he is not conducting a charity bureau.
Many a girl thinks that the world, as personified in her prospective employer, owes her a living. That is all wrong. The world owes you just what you are capable of earning. And when you have passed through the various stages of inexperience and incompetency to successful effort and a position of authority, you will look at the girls who come to you in search of work precisely as some one is looking at you to-day.
Be business-like even in applying for work.
Your possible employer wants to know if you can read, write, cipher, keep his stock in order and yourself presentable. If you can do these things, and have an ordinary amount of intelligence, he knows that in time you will earn your salary.
He does not want to know that you need a new hat, or that your invalid brother needs a rolling-chair, or that your mother is ill and ought to hire a maid with your salary, or that your father has met with reverses. If any of these afflictions have befallen your family, you are welcome to spend your salary alleviating them; but the one important factor in this man's calculations is: "Will she do the work and do it well?"
Tell him what you can do or what you mean to do when you are trained for the work, and never mind how you expect to spend your salary. Talk of your talents, not of your troubles. Stand on your merit as a worker, and not on your needs. Then your employer will say: "Here is a business-like, self-reliant girl, and I need her."
Girls, earning your living is work—and if you are not very careful it degenerates into the most monotonous, deadening, slavish form of work. Your one salvation will be your sincerity, your enthusiasm. Start out by believing in your employer, in yourself, and in your ability to rise. If you do this you will be the sort of girl the business world needs, the sort of girl who has her salary raised, the sort of girl who "makes good."
Here are two quotations which will prove immensely helpful to you. The first is from a poem by Dr. Henry Van Dyke:
Of all who live, I am the one by whom
This work can best be done, in my own way."
The second is from Elbert Hubbard's little magazine, The Philistine.
"Get your happiness out of your work, or you'll never know what happiness is."
When you have mastered their philosophy, and can go to your work each morning with a song in your heart, you will be the sort of girl the business world needs—and pays well.