I stand in one spot, about a two-or three-foot area, all night. . . . We do about 32 [welding] jobs per car, per unit. Forty-eight units an hour, eight hours a day. Thirty-two times forty-eight times eight. Figure it out. That’s how many times I push that but ton. . . . You dream, you think of things you’ve done. I drift back con tinu ously to when I was a kid and what me and my broth ers did. . . . [Y]ou’re noth ing more than a machine. They give bet ter care to that machine than they will to you. They’ll have more respect, give more atten tion to that machine. . . . Somehow you get the feel ing that the machine is bet ter than you are. 1 The other day when I was proofread ing [insur ance policy] endorse ments I noticed some guy had insured his store for $165,000 against van dal ism and $5,000 against fi re. Now that’s bound to be a mis take. They prob ably got it back wards. . . . I was just about to show it to [my super visor] when I fi gured, wait a minute! I’m not sup posed to read these forms. I’m just sup posed to check one column against another. And they do check. . . . They don’t explain this stuff to me. I’m not sup posed to under stand it. I’m just sup posed to check one column against the other. . . . If they’re gonna give me a robot’s job to do, I’m gonna do it like a robot! Anyway, it just lowers my pro duc tion record to get up and point out someone else’s error. 2

Few people can build a car by them selves, but com pan ies such as Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen turn out thou sands of cars every year by divid ing car build ing into simple assembly-line jobs. Likewise, insur ance policies can not be under writ ten by indi vidu als work ing alone, but com pan ies such as Allstate, State Farm, and Prudential suc ceed by break ing down policy pre par a tion into a num ber of less com plic ated cler ical tasks. As described in Chapter 2, the divi sion of labor , in which dif fi cult work is broken into smal ler tasks, enables organ ized groups of people to accomplish tasks that would oth er wise be bey ond their phys ical or men tal capa cit ies as indi vidu als.