Ten Thousand Working Days

by Robert Schrank

Book Overview

Robert Schrank is a Project Specialist at the Ford Foundation, and he holds a master's and doctorate in the sociology of work. He serves as consultant to the New York City Mayor's Productivity... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262191695
• ISBN13: 9780262191692
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Working life

This is an astoundingly candid look at life in the workplace, through many different blue- and white-collar jobs, levels of the American management-employee hierarchy, and economic circumstances. Robert Schrank describes the various jobs and workplaces, and what they have in common. Our family owns thousands of books, and this is the one book we own that I would most feel the loss of. I don't agree with Schrank's central conclusion but his insights are top-notch and never condescending. I have read it many times and look forward to reading it many more times. Please do not let this national treasure go out of print, MIT Press! From the back cover: This entertaining and informative work biography stems from Schrank's own experience of 40 years in jobs ranging from plumbers helper, farm laborer, and machinist, to union organizer and Ford Foundation executive with a degree in sociology. "Schrank's experience as an in-and-outer in enough lines of work to make his career a one-man Studs Terkel anthology lends credibility to this earthy appraisal of the well-springs of worker satisfaction and discontent. He gets inside the minds and the skin of the people he is writing about, and he does it with affection, not condescension... his book makes good sense and jolly reading." A.H. Raskin, The New York Times Book Review. "Schrank portrays a world of work that may be far different from what many middle-class managers imagine... many managers who don't understand what workers really want are barking up the wrong tree in their efforts to keep workers satisfied and productive... he had made an uncommonly provocative contribution, and... it's fun to read too." Roger Ricklefs, The Wall Street Journal. "Serious sociological studies of worklife usually have all the appeal of a 12-hour shift in a sweatshop. Not so Bob Schrank's Ten Thousand Working Days. His is an examination of worklife and its implications that reads more like a novel than a treatise." Juanita Kreps, The Washington Post.

Entertaining and accurate commentary on LIFE at work

I lent and lost my copy of this book over a decade ago, but I still remember reading this one book above most others. This memorable book was a humorous, entertaining and wise look at the whole of a person's life at work. From hourly to salaried workers, the author displays an insiteful and very human look at an activity that most spend over a quarter of their life engaged in. Although Schrank is very pro-union in his outlook (he was a union organizer,) his work was balanced, enjoyable and poignant even for a southerner with an ingrained right-to-work attitude. A pre-requisite to starting one's 'first job.'