These columns aim to help people write well — for example, to satisfy the needs and standards of their employer.
Approach writing, whether to workers or the public, with humility and loyalty
Studs Terkel, in his writing and how he interviewed, is a good example of how to do this.
By Gary Gilson
July 6, 2024 at 1:03PM
How many employers communicate in ways that satisfy workers?
Enter the lobby of almost any company and you’re likely to see a plaque honoring the Employee of the Month.
Nice touch.
A grander idea comes from Studs Terkel’s 1974 book “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.”
A 37-year-old steel mill laborer — a self-described “dying breed” doing “strictly muscle work” — told Terkel this:
“I would like to see a building, say, the Empire State. I would like to see on one side of it a foot-wide strip from top to bottom with the name of every bricklayer, the name of every electrician, with all the names. So, when a guy walked by, he could take his son and say, ‘See, that’s me over there on the forty-fifth floor. I put the steel beam in.’ Picasso can point to a painting … a writer can point to a book. Everybody should have something to point to.”
In preparing recently to write about successful new construction projects in Minnesota, I mentioned that steelworker’s vision to the manager of a project that employed 1,000 workers.
He loved the idea, and he said he would pursue it.
One reviewer of Terkel’s book said that listing individual workers in that way honors them and their work with the dignity they deserve.
Communication is a two-way street; so is loyalty.
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By the way, Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize winner who died in 2008, wrote that he got a lasting lesson in humility after interviewing a firefighter at his firehouse. When Terkel finished the interview, he excused himself, saying he had to rush across town to do another interview.
The firefighter protested: “You’re not going anywhere. You just took a piece of my life. You’re coming with me to meet my family.”
On the spot, Terkel changed his schedule, went to the man’s home and said later he got a better story there than the one he got at the firehouse.
Humility. Loyalty. Dignity.
Gary Gilson can be reached through www.writebetterwithgary.com.
about the writer
Gary Gilson
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