Sloan Wilson - Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

“It’s a good company. ” Tom began hesitantly, and was suddenly impatient at the need for hypocrisy. The sole reason he wanted to work for United Broadcasting was that he thought he might be able to make a lot of money there fast, but he felt he couldn’t say that. It was sometimes considered fashionable for the employees of foundations to say that they were in it for the money, but people were supposed to work at advertising agencies and broadcasting companies for spiritual reasons.

“I believe,” Tom said, “that television is developing into the greatest medium for mass education and entertainment. It has always fascinated me, and I would like to work with it. ”

“What kind of salary do you have in mind?” Walker asked. Tom hadn’t expected the question that soon. Walker was still smiling.

“The salary isn’t the primary consideration with me,” Tom said, trying desperately to come up with stock answers to stock questions. “I’m mainly interested in finding something useful and worth while to do. I have personal responsibilities, however, and I would hope that something could be worked out to enable me to meet them. ”

“Of course,” Walker said, beaming more cheerily than ever. “I understand you applied for a position in the public-relations department. Why did you choose that?”

Because I heard there was an opening, Tom wanted to say, but quickly thought better of it and substituted a halting avowal of lifelong interest in public relations. “I think my experience in working with people at the Schanenhauser Foundation would be helpful,” he concluded lamely.

“I see,” Walker said kindly. There was a short silence before he added, “Can you write?”

“I do most of the writing at the Schanenhauser Foundation,” Tom said. “The annual report to the trustees is my job, and so are most of the reports on individual projects. I used to be editor of my college paper.”

“That sounds fine,” Walker said casually. “I have a little favor I want to ask of you. I want you to write me your autobiography.”

“What?” Tom asked in astonishment.

“Nothing very long,” Walker said. “Just as much as you can manage to type out in an hour. One of my girls will give you a room with a typewriter.”

“Is there anything in particular you want me to tell you about?”

“Yourself,” Walker said, looking hugely pleased. “Explain yourself to me. Tell me what kind of person you are. Explain why we should hire you.”

“I’ll try,” Tom said weakly.

“You’ll have precisely an hour,” Walker said. “You see, this is a device I use in employing people — I find it most helpful. For this particular job, I have twenty or thirty applicants. It’s hard to tell from a brief interview whom to choose, so I ask them all to write about themselves for an hour. You’d be surprised how revealing the results are. ”

He paused, still smiling. Tom said nothing.

“Just a few hints,” Walker continued. “Write anything you want, but at the end of your last page, I’d like you to finish this sentence: ‘The most significant fact about me is. ’ ”

“The most significant fact about me is. ” Tom repeated idiotically.

“The results, of course, will be entirely confidential.” Walker lifted a bulky arm and inspected his wrist watch. “It’s now five minutes to twelve,” he concluded. “I’ll expect your paper on my desk at precisely one o’clock.”

Tom stood up, put on his coat, said, “Thank you,” and went out of the room. The utilitarian secretary already had a stack of typewriting paper ready for him. She led him to a small room a few doors down the hall in which were a typewriter and a hard office chair. There was a large clock on the wall. The room had no windows. Across the ceiling was a glaring fluorescent light which made the bare white plaster walls look yellow. The secretary walked out without a word, shutting the door silently behind her.

Tom sat down in the chair, which had been designed for a stenographer and was far too small for him. Son of a bitch, he thought — I guess the laws about cruel and unusual punishment don’t apply to personnel men. He tried to think of something to write, but all he could remember was Betsy and the drab little house and the need to buy a new washing machine, and the time he had thrown a vase that cost forty dollars against the wall. “The most significant fact about me is that I once threw a vase costing forty dollars against a wall.” That would be as sensible as anything else he could think of, but he doubted whether it would get him the job. He thought of Janey saying, “It isn’t fair! ” and the worn linoleum on the kitchen floor. “The most significant fact about me is. ” It was a stupid sentence to ask a man to finish.

I have children, he thought — that’s probably the most significant fact about me, the only one that will have much importance for long. Anything about a man can be summed up in numbers. Thomas R. Rath, thirty-three years old, making seven thousand dollars a year, owner of a 1939 Ford, a six-room house, and ten thousand dollars’ worth of G.I. Life Insurance which, in case of his death, would pay his widow about forty dollars a month. Six feet one and a half inches tall; weight, 198 pounds. He served four and a half years in the Army, most of it in Europe and the rest in the South Pacific.

Another statistical fact came to him then, a fact which he knew would be ridiculously melodramatic to put into an application for a job at the United Broadcasting Corporation, or to think about at all. He hadn’t thought about this for a long while. It wasn’t a thing he had deliberately tried to forget — he simply hadn’t thought about it for quite a few years. It was the unreal-sounding, probably irrelevant, but quite accurate fact that he had killed seventeen men.

It had been during the war, of course. He had been a paratrooper. Lots of other people had killed more men than he had. Lots of bomber crews and artillerymen had, but, of course, they never really knew it. Lots of infantrymen and lots of paratroopers had, and most of them knew it. Plenty of men had been dropped behind the enemy lines, as Tom had been on five different occasions, and they had had to do some of their killing silently, with blackjacks and knives. They had known what they were doing, and most of them were healthy enough not to be morbid about it, and not to be proud of it, and not to be ashamed of it. Such things were merely part of the war, the war before the Korean one. It was no longer fashionable to talk about the war, and certainly it had never been fashionable to talk about the number of men one had killed. Tom couldn’t forget the number, “seventeen,” but it didn’t seem real any more; it was just a small, isolated statistic that nobody wanted. His mind went blank. Suddenly the word “Maria” flashed into it.

“The most significant fact about me is that I. ”

Nonsense, he thought, and brought himself back to the present with a jerk. Only masochists can get along without editing their own memories. Maria was a girl he had known in Italy during the war, a long time ago, and he never thought about her any more, just as he never thought about the seventeen men he had killed. It wasn’t always easy to forget, but it was certainly necessary to try.

“The most significant fact about me is that for four and a half years my profession was jumping out of airplanes with a gun, and now I want to go into public relations.”

That probably wouldn’t get him the job, Tom thought. “The most significant fact about me is that I detest the United Broadcasting Corporation, with all its soap operas, commercials, and yammering studio audiences, and the only reason I’m willing to spend my life in such a ridiculous enterprise is that I want to buy a more expensive house and a better brand of gin.”