Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (22)

I can't recall much about the Bulova personnel department interview, which probably led me to being hired as a "Parts Department Clerk." But I do have some memories of what 9-to-5 wage slave life was like during my months of work at Bulova during the 1970's.

The male clerical worker who had previously been hired for this Parts Department Clerk position at Bulova had kept the job for less than a month. Prior to being hired for the position, he had apparently held a much better-paying unionized blue-collar job on the Long Island Railroad [LIRR] commuter train line.

But he was apparently the type of U.S. worker who could not imagine a weekday life without a full weekly paycheck being received from some capitalist, corporate or government employer. So when his union called a strike on the LIRR, the previous Bulova Parts Department Clerk apparently chose to spend his time hunting for another job that would provide him with a regular weekly paycheck immediately--rather than volunteering for picket-line duty during the strike.

Somehow he apparently tricked and convinced the Bulova person who hired him that he would not quit his Parts Department Clerk job at Bulova once the LIRR strike was over, in order to return to his higher-paying union job at the LIRR. But once the LIRR strike was settled, that's exactly what my predecessor as Parts Department Clerk at Bulova did.