Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

“I heard about a new job today,” Tom said. “Public relations. United Broadcasting Corporation.”

“How much does it pay?”

“Probably a good deal more than I’m getting now.”

There was an instant of silence before she said, “Are you going to try for it?”

“I might.”

Betsy finished her drink and poured herself another. “I’ve never thought of you as a public-relations man,” she said soberly. “Would you like it?”

“I’d like the money.”

Betsy sighed. “It would be wonderful to get out of this house,” she said.

THE NEXT MORNING, Tom put on his best suit, a freshly cleaned and pressed gray flannel. On his way to work he stopped in Grand Central Station to buy a clean white handkerchief and to have his shoes shined. During his luncheon hour he set out to visit the United Broadcasting Corporation. As he walked across Rockefeller Plaza, he thought wryly of the days when he and Betsy had assured each other that money didn’t matter. They had told each other that when they were married, before the war, and during the war they had repeated it in long letters. “The important thing is to find a kind of work you really like, and something that is useful,” Betsy had written him. “The money doesn’t matter.”

The hell with that, he thought. The real trouble is that up to now we’ve been kidding ourselves. We might as well admit that what we want is a big house and a new car and trips to Florida in the winter, and plenty of life insurance. When you come right down to it, a man with three children has no damn right to say that money doesn’t matter.

There were eighteen elevators in the lobby of the United Broadcasting building. They were all brass colored and looked as though they were made of money. The receptionist in the personnel office was a breathtakingly beautiful girl with money-colored hair — a sort of copper gold. “Yes?” she said.

“I want to apply for a position in the public-relations department.”

“If you will sit down in the reception room, I’ll arrange an interview for you,” she said.

The company had a policy of giving all job applicants an interview. Every year about twenty thousand people, most of them wildly unqualified, applied for jobs there, and it was considered poor public relations to turn them away too abruptly. Beyond the receptionist’s desk was a huge waiting room. A rich wine-red carpet was on the floor, and there were dozens of heavy leather armchairs filled with people nervously smoking cigarettes. On the walls were enormous colored photographs of the company’s leading radio and television stars. They were all youthful, handsome, and unutterably rich-appearing as they smiled down benignly on the job applicants. Tom picked a chair directly beneath a picture of a big-bosomed blonde. He had to wait only about twenty minutes before the receptionist told him that a Mr. Everett would see him. Mr. Everett’s office was a cubicle with walls of opaque glass brick, only about three times as big as a priest’s confessional. Everett himself was a man about Tom’s age and was also dressed in a gray flannel suit. The uniform of the day, Tom thought. Somebody must have put out an order.

“I understand that you are interested in a position in the public-relations department,” Everett said.

“I just want to explore the situation,” Tom replied. “I already have a good position with the Schanenhauser Foundation, but I’m considering a change.”

It took Everett only about a minute to size Tom up as a “possibility.” He gave him a long printed form to fill out and told him he’d hear from the United Broadcasting Corporation in a few days. Tom spent almost an hour filling out all the pages of the form, which, among other things, required a list of the childhood diseases he had had and the names of countries he had visited. When he had finished, he gave it to the girl with the hair of copper gold and rang for one of the golden elevators to take him down.

Five days later Tom got a letter from Everett saying an interview had been arranged for him with Mr. Gordon Walker in Room 3672 the following Monday at 11:00 A.M. In the letter Walker was given no title. Tom didn’t know whether he were going to have another routine interview, or whether he were actually being considered for a position. He wondered whether he should tell Dick Haver, the director of the Schanenhauser Foundation, that he was looking for another job. The danger of not telling him was that the broadcasting company might call him for references any time, and Dick wouldn’t be pleased to find that Tom was applying for another job behind his back. It was important to keep Dick’s good will, because the broadcasting company’s decision might depend on the recommendation Dick gave him. In any one of a thousand ways, Dick could damn him, without Tom’s ever learning about it. All Dick would have to do when the broadcasting company telephoned him would be to say, “Tom Rath? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I’d want to go on record one way or the other on Mr. Rath. He’s a nice person, you understand, an awfully nice person. I’d be perfectly willing to say that!”

On the other hand, it would be embarrassing to tell Dick he was seeking another job and then be unable to find one. Tom decided to delay seeing Dick until after he had had his next interview.

Walker’s outer office was impressive. As soon as Tom saw it, he knew he was being seriously considered for a job, and maybe a pretty good one. Walker had two secretaries, one chosen for looks, apparently, and one for utility. A pale-yellow carpet lay on the floor, and there was a yellow leather armchair for callers. Walker himself was closeted in an inner office which was separated from the rest of the room by a partition of opaque glass brick.

The utilitarian secretary told Tom to wait. It was extremely quiet. Neither of the two girls was typing, and although each had two telephones on her desk and an interoffice communication box, there was no ringing or buzzing. Both the secretaries sat reading typewritten sheets in black notebooks. After Tom had waited about half an hour, the pretty secretary, with no audible or visible cue, suddenly looked up brightly and said, “Mr. Walker will see you now. Just open the door and go in.”

Tom opened the door and saw a fat pale man sitting in a high-backed upholstered chair behind a kidney-shaped desk with nothing on it but a blotter and pen. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds. His face was as white as a marshmallow. He didn’t stand up when Tom came in, but he smiled. It was a surprisingly warm, spontaneous smile, as though he had unexpectedly recognized an old friend. “Thomas Rath?” he said. “Sit down! Make yourself comfortable! Take off your coat!”

Tom thanked him and, although it wasn’t particularly warm, took oft his coat. There wasn’t anyplace to put it, so, sitting down in the comfortable chair in front of Walker’s desk, he laid the coat awkwardly across his lap.

“I’ve read the application forms you filled out, and it seems to me you might be qualified for a new position we may have opening up here,” Walker said. “There are just a few questions I want to ask you.” He was still smiling. Suddenly he touched a button on the arm of his chair and the back of the chair dropped, allowing him to recline, as though he were in an airplane seat. Tom could see only his face across the top of the desk.

“You will excuse me,” Walker said, still smiling. “The doctor says I must get plenty of rest, and this is the way I do it.”

Tom couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to say than “It looks comfortable. ”

“Why do you want to work for the United Broadcasting Corporation?” Walker asked abruptly.