Job - A Comedy Of Justice Part 28

In the meantime one must render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Of course I elected to work six days a week rather than five ($31,200 a year!) - as I needed every shekel I could garner. Margrethe needed everything! and so did I. Especially we needed shoes. The shoes we had been wearing when disaster struck in Mazatlan had been quite good shoes - for peasants in Mazatlan. But they had been worn during two days of digging through rubble after the quake, then had been worn continuously since then; they were ready for the trash bin. So we needed shoes, at least two pairs each, one pair for work, one for Sunday-go-to-meeting.

And many other things. I don't know what all a woman needs, but it is more complex than what a man needs. I had to put money into Margrethe's hands and encourage her to buy what she needed. I could pig it with nothing more than shoes and a pair of dungarees (to spare my one good outfit) - although I did buy a razor, and got a haircut at a barber's college near the mission, one where a haircut was only two dollars if one was willing to accept the greenest apprentice, and I was. Margrethe looked at it and said gently that she thought she could do as well herself, and save us that two dollars. Later she took scissors and straightened out what that untalented apprentice had done, to me... and thereafter I never again spent money on barbers.

I But saving two dollars did not offset a greater damage. I had honestly thought, when Mr Cowgirl hired me, that I was going to be paid a hundred dollars every day I worked.

He didn't pay me that much and he didn't cheat me. Let me explain.

I finished that first day of work tired but happy. Happier than I had been since the earthquake struck, I mean happiness is relative. I stopped at the cas.h.i.+er-s stand where Mr Cowgirl was working on his accounts, Ron's Grill having closed for the day. He looked up. 'How did it go, Alec?'

'Just fine, sir.'

'Luke tells me that you are doing okay.' Luke was a giant blackamoor, head cook and my nominal boss. In fact he had not supervised me other than to show me where things were and make sure that I knew what to do.

'That's pleasant to hear. Luke's a good cook.' That one-meal-a-day bonus over minimum wage I had eaten at four o'clock as breakfast was ancient history by then. Luke had explained to me that the help could order anything on the menu but steaks or chops, and that today I could have all the seconds I wanted if I chose either the stew or the meat loaf.

I chose the meat loaf because his kitchen smelled and looked clean. You can tell far more about a cook by his meat loaf than you can from the way he grills a steak. I took seconds on the meat loaf - with no catsup.

Luke was generous in the slab of cherry pie he cut for me, then he added a scoop of vanilla ice cream... which I did not rate, as it was an either/or, not both.

'Luke seldom says a good word about white boys,' my employer went on, 'and never about a Chicano. So you must be doing okay.'

'I hope so.' I was growing a mite impatient. We are all the Lord's children but it was the first time in my life that a blackamoor's opinion of my work had mattered. I simply wanted to be paid so that I could hurry home to Margrethe - to the Salvation Army mission, that is.

Mr Cowgirl folded his hands and twiddled his thumbs. 'You want to be paid, don't you?'

I controlled my annoyance. 'Yes, sir.'

-'Alec, with dishwashers I prefer to pay by the week.'

I. felt dismay ' and I am sure my face showed it.

'Don't misunderstand me,' he added. 'You're an. hourly-rate employee, so you are paid at the end of each day if that's what you choose.'

'Then I do choose. I need the money.'

'Let me finish. The reason I prefer to pay dishwashers weekly instead of daily is that, all too often, if I hire one and pay him at the end of the day, he goes straight out and buys a jug of muscatel, then doesn't show up for a couple of days.' When he does, he wants his job back. Angry at me. Ready to complain to the Labor Board. Funny part about it is that I may even be able to give him his job back - for another one-day shot at it -because the b.u.m I've hired in his place has gone and done the same thing.

'This isn't likely to happen with Chicanos as they usually want to save money to send back to Mexico. But I've yet to see the Chicano who could handle the scullery to suit Luke ... and I need Luke more than I need a particular dishwasher. Negras -Luke can usually tell me whether a spade is going to work out, and the good ones are better than a white boy any time. But the good ones are always trying to improve themselves... and if I don't promote them to pantry boy or a.s.sistant cook or whatever, soon they go across the street to somebody who will. So it's always a problem. If I can get a week's work out of a dishwasher, I figure I've won. If I get two weeks, I'm jubilant. Once I got a full month. But that's once in a lifetime.'

'You're going to get three full weeks out of me,' I said. 'Now can I have my pay?'

'Don't rush me. If you elect to be paid once a week, I go for a dollar more on your hourly rate. That's forty, dollars more at the end of the week. What do you say?'

(No, that's forty-eight more per week, I told myself. Almost $34,000 per year just for was.h.i.+ng dishes. Whew!) 'That's forty-eight dollars more each week,' I answered. 'Not forty. As I'm going for that six-days-a-week option. I do need the money.'

'Okay, Then I pay you once a week.'

'Just a moment. Can't we start it tomorrow? I need some cash today. My wife and I haven't anything, anything at all. I've got the clothes I'm standing in, nothing else. The same for my wife. I can sweat it out a few more days. But there are things a woman just has to have.'

He shrugged. 'Suit yourself. But you don't get the dollar-an-hour bonus for today's work. And if you are one minute late tomorrow, I'll a.s.sume you're sleeping it off and I put the sign back in the window.'

'I'm no wino, Mr Cowgirl.'

'We'll see.' He turned to his bookkeeping machine and did something to its keyboard. I don't know what because I never understood it. It was an arithmetic machine but nothing like a Babbage Numerator. It had keys on it somewhat like a typewriting machine. But- there was a window above that where numbers and letters appeared by some sort of magic.

The machine whirred and tinkled and he reached into it and brought out a card, handed it -to me. 'There you are.'

I took it and examined it, and again felt dismay.

It was a piece of pasteboard about three inches wide and seven long, with numerous little holes punched in it and with printing on it that stated that it was a draft on Nogales Commercial and Savings Bank by which Ron's Grill directed them to pay to Alec L. Graham - No, not one hundred dollars.

Fifty-one dollars and twenty-seven cents.

'Something wrong?' he asked.

'Uh, I had expected twelve-fifty an hour.'

'That's what I paid you. Eight hours at minimum wage. You can check the deductions yourself. That's not my arithmetic; this is an IBM 1990 and it's instructed by IBM software, Paymaster Plus ... and IBM has a standing offer of ten thousand dollars to any employee who can show that this model IBM and this mark of their software fouled up a pay check. Look at it. Gross pay, one hundred dollars. Deductions all listed. Add ' 'em up. Subtract them. Check your answer against IBM's answer. But don't blame me. I didn't write those laws - and I like them even less than you do. Do you realize that almost every dishwasher that comes in here, whether wetback or citizen, wants me to pay him in cash and forget the deductions? Do you know what the fine is if they catch me doing it just once? What happens if they catch me a second time? Don't look sour at me - go talk to the government.'

'I just don't understand it. It's new to me, all of it. Can you tell me what these deductions mean? This one that says "Admin", for example.'

'That stands for "administration fee" but don't ask me why you have to pay it, as I am the one who has to do the bookkeeping and I certainly don't get paid to do it.'

I tried to check the other deductions against the fine-print explanations. 'SocSec' turned out to be 'Social Security'. The young lady had explained that to me this morning... but I had told her at the time that, while it was certainly an excellent idea, I felt that I would have to wait until later before subscribing to it; I could not afford it just yet. 'MedIns' and 'HospIns' and DentIns' were simple enough but I could not afford them now, either. But what was 'PL217'? The fine print simply referred to a date and page in TubReg'. What about 'DepEduc' and 'UNESCO'?

And what in the world was 'Income Tax'?

'I still don't understand it. It's all new to me.'

'Alec, you're not the only one who doesn't understand it. But why do you say it is new to you? It has been going on all your life ... and your daddy's -and youi ,grand-daddy's, at least.'

'I'm sorry. What is "Income Tax"?'

He blinked at me. 'Are you sure you don't need to see a shrink?'

'What is a "shrink"?'

He sighed. 'Now I need to see one. Look, Alec. Just take it. Discuss the deductions with the government, not with me. You sound sincere, so maybe you were hit on the head when you got caught in the Mazatlan quake. I just want to go home and take a Miltown. So take it, please.'

'All right. I guess. But I don't know anyone who would cash this for me.'

'No problem. Endorse it back to me and I'll pay you, cash. But keep the stub, as the IRS will insist on seeing all your deductions stubs before paying you back any overpayment.'

I didn't understand that, either, but I kept the stub.

Despite the shock of learning that almost half my pay was gone before I touched it, we were better off each day, as, between us, Margrethe and I had over four hundred dollars a week that did not have to be spent just to stay alive but could be converted into clothing and other necessities. Theoretically she was being paid the same wages as had been the cook she replaced, or twenty-two dollars an hour for twenty-four hours a week, or $528/week.

In fact she had the same sort of deductions I had, which paused her net pay to come to just under $290/week. Again theoretically. But $54/week was checked off for lodging fair. enough, I decided, when I found out what rooming houses were charging. More than fair, in fact. Then we were a.s.sessed $I05/week for meals. Brother McCaw at first had put us down for $I40/week for meals and had offered to show by his books that Mrs Owens, the regular cook, had always paid, by checkoff, $I0 each day for her meals... so the two of us should be a.s.sessed $I40/week.