GIRL, PEOPLE HAVE GOT some crust! Some folks’ notion of what’s fair is all out of whack, and it takes your friend Mildred to tell it! You know, Marge, I told you how I was sick and tired of runnin’ from hither to yon in order to make a bare livin’? … That’s right, days work can carry you all over town, workin’ first for this one and then the other. There’s some mornin’s that it takes me a good five minutes to remember just where I’m goin’ to work. So I decided to try steady time once more and look me up a permanent place to work…. Yes, I got it out the newspaper and telephoned the lady before the print was dry.
Honey, you never heard such a interview as she put me through. You shoulda heard her! “Now, Mildred, why do you want this job?” Don’t laugh, I know you want to but try and listen. Did you ever hear such a simple question? I could of told her the truth and make mention of that nasty word money, but I knew that would make her sad, so I said very prettily, “Because I’d like a nice steady job with a good family.”
Hot dog! I struck pay-dirt, her smile was the sunshine of a May afternoon. Sure she asked me some more things. I had to give her references, the name of my minister and my doctor, how long I worked in my last three places and how come this and why not that until we was both fair worn out with talk and more talk. Finally she seems all satisfied and made the summin’ up, “I think you’ll do just fine, and I hope we can make some satisfactory arrangement that’ll make us both happy.” Marge, before I can get in a word about what’ll make me happy she takes a sheet of paper out of her desk and starts readin’ off how things will go. “Mildred,” she says, “on Monday you will report at eight o’clock in the mornin’ and after the breakfast dishes you will do the washin’. Of course we have a machine,” “Naturally,” I says, then she starts runnin’ her finger down this devilish list: “After the washin’ you will take care of the children’s lunch, prepare dinner, clean the baby’s room thoroughly and leave after the supper dishes, that’s Monday.” “So much for Monday,” I says, “and how about Tuesday?” “Well,” she says, “you don’t come in until noon on Tuesday, then you fix the children’s lunch, iron, give the kitchen a thorough cleaning, prepare dinner and leave after the supper dishes.” “Well,” I says, “here we are at Wednesday already.” “Yes,” she says, “on Wednesday you come in at eight in the mornin’ and do all the floors, fix the children’s lunch, do the mendin’, give the foyer and the baths a thorough cleanin’, prepare the dinner …” “… and leave after the supper dishes,” I says. “That’s right,” she says, “and the schedule remains pretty much the same for the rest of the week; on Thursday you thoroughly clean the bedrooms, on Friday the livin’ room, on Saturday the pantry shelves, silver, and clothes closets and on Sunday you fix early dinner and leave after one-thirty.”
Marge, I must have looked pure bewildered because she adds, “Do you have any comment?” “A little,” I says, “when is my off-time?” “Oh that,” she says. “Yes mam,” I says, and then she begins to run her finger down the list again. “Well, you have one half-day off every Tuesday and one half-day off every Sunday and every other Thursday you get a full day off, which makes it a five and a half day week.”
How ’bout that Marge! I was never too good at arithmetic, but I really had to tip my hat to her. Even somebody as smart as Einstein couldn’t have figured nothin’ as neat as that. Before I could get a word in on what I considered the deal of the year, she played her trump card, “I will pay you two weeks pay on the first and fifteenth of each month.” “But that way,” I says, “I lose a week’s pay every time the month has five weeks,” Well, she repeats herself, “I pay on the first and fifteenth.”
No, Marge, you know I wasn’t comin’ on that! In the first place I could see me workin’ myself into such a lather that there wouldn’t be nothin’ to do but crawl into the doctor’s office on the first and fifteenth and give every blessed nickel I had in order that he could try and straighten me out in time to meet the second and the sixteenth. In the second place … oh, well, what’s the use? You get the picture! I backed out of there so fast ’til I bet she’s not sure that I was ever there.
But it set me to thinkin’. How come all of them big-shots in Washington that can’t balance the budget or make the taxes cover all our expenses, how come they don’t send for that woman to help straighten them out? Why, in two or three weeks she’d not only get everything on a payin’ basis, but she’d have enough money left over to buy every citizen a free ice cream cone for the Fourth of July, not countin’ all the loot we’d have left over to bury at Fort Knox! Genius like that just pure takes your breath away. It’s almost beautiful in a disgustin’ sort of way, ain’t it?