PART III
Social Organization
10
Status and Role
Rayn/aGoldn/an/an/an/a
Janitors Versus Tenants: A Status-Income Dilemma1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There is some kind of status relationship between the
worker and the person served in almost any occupation where the two meet
and interact. For example, when the salesperson and the customer meet, each
brings to bear on the other valuations by which the other’s status category
can be tentatively ascertained. This tentative status designation enables
each to make a rough judgment as to how to act toward the other person and
as to how he thinks the other person will act toward him. If their
association is resumed, their initial judgments strongly influence the
character of their subsequent interactions. If they are separated by wide
barriers of social distance, they may carry on an almost formal
salesperson-customer relationship for years. Or their respective status
judgments may be such that the status barriers are gradually penetrated. In
any case, the status relationship between them is always present, unless it
is resolved into an absolute equalitarian relationship. Likewise, in the
case of the physician and his patients, the plumber and his
customers, the minister and his parishioners, and in others, there is a
status relationship of which both parties are more or less aware and
which influences the pattern of their interactions. Such being the case,
the nature and form of these status relationships can and should be studied
wherever they occur.
The present example, which concerns the apartment-building janitor and
his tenants, is a case study in such status relationships. The form these
relationships have taken is that of a marked dilemma of status and
income.
STATUS AND INCOME
The status-income dilemma may be expected to occur in two situations.
One is that in which an individual earns too little to pay for the goods
and services generally associated with his other social characteristics.
The other is that in which he earns enough to pay for goods and services
generally associated not with his other social characteristics but
with those of members of higher social classes. When an individual in the
first dilemma meets and interacts almost daily on a rather personal level
with one in the second as, respectively, in the case of the tenant2 and
the apartment-building janitor, they develop an association
whose form and content are of sociological interest.
The data in this article are based entirely upon interviews with
janitors. What results is a penetrating view of the janitor’s conceptions
of tenants and of his interpretations of their conceptions of him. Thus, we
obtain an intimate understanding of the janitor’s view of how he and
tenants spar to resolve their respective dilemmas. Although many of the
tenants may not be so sensitive as the janitor to this contest, it is safe
to assume that, through his untiring efforts to play the game with his
rules, the tenants are aware that he is agitating to change their
traditional patterns of interaction.
In the early part of this century, before janitors in Chicago were
unionized, they catered to virtually every whim of their employers and
tenants in order to establish job security. Since they have become
unionized, their duties have been greatly delimited, their wages increased,
and their privileges extended to include a rent-free basement apartment in
one of the larger buildings which they service. At present, they are
required to fire the furnace to provide heat and hot water for the tenants,
to remove the tenants’ garbage regularly, to make minor emergency repairs,
and to keep the building and grounds clean.
Having a history, the janitor also has a reputation. The tenant-public
seems to look upon him as an ignorant, lazy, and dirty occupational misfit.
There has developed a general belief that, if a man cannot do anything else
successfully, he can always become a janitor. This stereotype has been
perpetuated by the public because of a number of beliefs, principally the
following: (1) many janitors are foreign-born and therefore strange and
suspicious; (2) the janitor is always seen wearing dirty clothes, so the
tenants seem to feel that he habitually disregards cleanliness; (3) the
janitor lives in the basement, which symbolizes his low status; and (4) the
janitor removes the tenants’ garbage, a duty which subserves him to them.
It is because the public has singled out these features in their view of
the janitor that his ascribed status has been lowly. In the public’s view
it seems that the janitor merely is a very low-class person doing menial
work for the tenants.
It is true that the performance of janitorial duties requires neither
lengthy training nor a high order of mechanical or technical skills.
However, the nature of the
janitor’s situation has led him to play roles and incorporate self-conceptions which
frequently overshadow those which others expect of a combination caretaker and
handy man. Because he does not work under direct supervision and can plan his
work to suit himself, he feels that he is his own boss: he, alone, is in charge of the
building and responsible for the safety of the tenants. After becoming proficient at
making repairs for tenants, he magnifies his handy-man role into that of a master
mechanic. Combining these two roles, he then sees himself as an entrepreneur who
runs a cash business of attending to the tenants’ service needs.
These roles, together with others which stem from the work situation, contradict
the public’s stereotyped view of the janitor. Being sensitive to these social conceptions,
the janitor strives to gain the tenants’ acceptance as a person who has
risen above the disreputable fellow these conceptions describe. Toward this end he
not only plays the role of a respectable, dignified human being but of one who has
a very substantial income.… In this setting it is evident that the janitor’s
social relationships with the tenants are of crucial importance to him. These
relationships are pervaded by his persistent disowning of his unhappy
occupational heritage and the justification of his claim to middle-class
status.
So important are social relationships with the tenants that the janitor
defines success in terms of them. As many janitors have pointed out:
The most important thing about a janitor’s work is that you have to know
how to deal with people. Then, when you show the tenants that you have a
clean character and are respectable, you can train them to be good tenants,
that’s what’s really important in being a success.
Because the janitor attempts to realize his self when interacting with
his tenants, his efforts to train them are actually channeled toward the
establishment of relationships which support, rather than oppose, his
self-conceptions. The "good" tenants support his self-conceptions; the
"bad" tenants oppose them.
It will be well now to examine the nature of these social relationships
to determine how they give rise to the personal and social dilemmas which
comprise the central theme of this discussion.
The janitor believes that, in general, tenants hold him in low esteem.
Even the most friendly tenants maintain some social distance between the
janitor and themselves. Tenants, generally, overlook his qualifications
as an individual and see him only as a member of a low-status group. In
their view he is merely an occupational type. The most militant proponents
of this view are the "bad" tenants.
There are two characteristics of a special group of "bad" tenants which
are apposite to this presentation. These characteristics, jealousy and
resentment, are descriptive of only those tenants who are embittered by the
janitor’s economic prowess. They are people whose incomes are usually
below, but sometimes slightly above, the janitor’s income. The janitor
often refers to these tenants as "four-flushers." They live on the brink of
bankruptcy, and he knows it.3 Status symbols are very important
to them. Unlike the janitor, they apparently strain their budgets to
improve the appearance of their persons and their apartments. When they
see
the janitor’s new car or television aerial, their idea of high-status
symbols, it is almost more than they can bear. It violates their sense of
social justice. In consequence of his high income, the janitor can
acquire things which these tenants may interpret as a threat to the
established social order.
The janitor’s new car, parked conspicuously in front of the building,
serves constantly to remind tenants of his pecuniary power. It draws the
most Criticism from the jealous tenants. Commenting on the tensions thereby
engendered, Janitor No. 35 remarked:
There is a certain amount of jealousy when janitors try to better
themselves. A whole lot are jealous because the janitor makes more than
they do. But they don’t consider the time a janitor puts in. When I got my
Dodge two years ago somebody said, "Huh, look at that fellow. He must be
making the money or he wouldn’t be buying a new car." I know one party,
they think a janitor should be in working clothes all the time. Just
because a janitor likes to go out in an auto and they don’t have any, there
is that feeling between janitor and the tenant, that’s for sure.
Some of these fourflushers do own an automobile. But if the janitor’s
car is bigger and newer than theirs, they are extremely mortified. Janitor
No. 33 experienced the wrath of such people:
About a third of the tenants are very pleasant about it when they see my
car, but the rest say, "Holy cripe, the janitor got a new car!" The same
majority is the ones you are in trouble with all the time. They say, "How
is the ’nigger’ with the big car?" meaning I am a "nigger" because I got a
Buick and my car is bigger than theirs.
The janitor finds that the jealous tenants are impossible to
accommodate. They do not want to be accommodated by him. "No matter
what you do," protested Janitor No. 14, "they squawk." Their animosity
seems to know no bounds. They deliberately attempt to create trouble for
the janitor by complaining about him to his employer.
Besides complaining about him, these tenants reveal their resentment of
the janitor’s mobility efforts by making nasty remarks to him. This was
shown very clearly in a conversation with Janitor No. 12 and his wife:
JANITOR: When we got our 10 per cent raise a short time ago, the
tenants didn’t like it. You see how nice this [first-floor] apartment
looks. Well, there ain’t another apartment in the building that’s decorated
as nice as this. I had all those cabinets in the kitchen tore out and got
new ones put in. That brick glass and ventilator in the transom opening—I
had it done. Tenants didn’t like to see me do all that. They resent it.
INTERVIEWER: How do they show their resentment?
WIFE: Mostly by making snotty remarks. One woman told us that we
shouldn’t live in such a nice apartment on the first floor, that we should
live in a hole [basement apartment] like other janitors. Then they are
sarcastic in a lot of other ways. They just don’t like to see us have a
nice apartment and a new car. I guess they’d rather see us live like
rats.
The basement apartment is symbolic of the janitor’s subservient status.
If he can arrange with his employer to obtain a first-floor apartment,
there is nothing that the jealous tenants can do to stop him. They can only
try to make life miserable for him.
Jealous tenants disdainfully address him as "Janitor," rather than using
his given name. It is bad enough, from his standpoint, that all other
tenants address him by his given name, thereby indicating his historically
servile status. But these
resentful tenants go further. They call him by his occupational name.
Symbolically, their use of this "dirty" name means that they want their
relationships with him to be as impersonal as possible. They want the
janitor to be aware of the great social distance which he would dare to
bridge. Janitor No. 14 commented on this form of address:
JANITOR: The bad ones squawk as long as they live. No matter what you do
they squawk. They’re the ones that don’t call you by your name. They’re a
lower class of people, but they try to make you feel even lower than them.
INTERVIEWER: Why do they call you "Janitor"?
JANITOR: It’s either out of stupidity or to make you think you are a
slave to them—an underdog. Janitors get the same crap all over the city, I
know.
These fourflushers who address him as "Janitor" are unalterably opposed
to his efforts to better himself. The longer they live in the building, the
worse their relationships with him become. This point was brought out by
Janitor No. 4:
Boy, I’ll tell you about one thing that happened to me last Christmas
morning. This woman rings my bell when I’m out and gives an envelope to my
wife to give to me. I passed by the back windows here a little while later
and looked in like I always do to wave at the kid, and my wife called me in
because she thought there must be a present in the envelope. So I went in
and opened it up and there was a note inside that said, "I’ll be home today
so please keep the heat up." I was so mad I coulda booted her ass right
over the fence if she was there. That’s how the tenants get when they been
living here too long. Most of them think they own the building, and you
should do just what they want.
As Janitor No. 4 insisted, the fourflushers’ unthinking demands for
personal service, their utter disregard for the janitor’s integrity and
authority, and their possessiveness toward the building increase with their
length of residence. The building becomes more and more like "home" to
them, the longer they live there. "They can’t afford to have a home and
servants of their own," observed Janitor No. 18, "so they try to treat the
janitor as their servant." They like to think of him as a mobile part of
the building, always at their beck and call. Still, the deep-seated
animosities between these tenants and the janitor preclude any mutually
satisfactory adjustment of their respective roles. Through the years they
continue to be jealous and resentful of him. Meanwhile, he continues to
resent their unco-operativeness and disrespect. The building becomes as
much "home" to him as it does to them. But there is something about "home"
that can never be remedied. From the standpoint of these fourflushers, that
something is the janitor. From the janitor’s point of view, that something
is the fourflushers.
Turning now from janitors whose tenants have incomes that are marginal
to theirs to janitors whose tenants are plainly well-to-do, it is evident
that there is a remarkable contrast in janitor-tenant relationships. The
following conversation with Janitor No. 26 will serve as an introduction to
this contrast:
INTERVIEWER: Some fellows have told me that many of their tenants resent their
getting a new car or a television set. Have you ever come up against that?
JANITOR: That class of people don’t live here, of course. The class of people you’re
talking about are making two hundred a month, don’t have a car, and are lucky they’re
living. Yeah, I’ve met up with them.… People here aren’t jealous if you got a new car.
People here feel you have to have a car, like bread and butter.
Tenants whose incomes are clearly higher than the janitor’s have no
cause to be
jealous of him. They do not compete with him for symbols of pecuniary
power. There is more prestige attached to having an engineer in the
building than to having a janitor, so they call him "the engineer." These
people obviously do not have the status-income problems of the fourflushers
who contemptuously address him as "Janitor." Clearly, then, tenants who are
well-to-do have no need to make demands. As Janitor No. 17, many of whose
tenants have incomes marginal to his, so penetratingly observed:
The people that don’t have anything put up the biggest front and squawk
a lot. The people who got it don’t need any attention. I’d rather work for
rich tenants. The ones we got here are middle ones. Those tenants that sing
don’t have a right to.… Some few tenants just got here from the Negro
district. They were stuck there until they could find a place to move to.
Man, they’re real glad to be here. They don’t give me no trouble at
all.
Demonstrating remarkable insight, Janitor No. 17 pointed out that the
"rich" tenants do not feel that they need attention from the janitor; that
the "refugee" (like the poor) tenants feel that they are in no position to
make demands; and that the fourflushers or "middle" (probably lower-middle)
tenants are the most troublesome.
When a janitor works for many years in a building occupied by well-to-do
tenants, it is not unusual that a genuinely warm relationship develops
between him and these tenants. They probably come to see him as an old
family employee, while he believes that he has been accepted for himself.
As Janitor No. 26 asserted, "They feel they’re no better than me—I’m no
better than them, and they always invite me in for coffee or something like
that." There is no problem in sharing identification of "home." The
building is undisputedly "home" to both the janitor and the "rich" tenants,
because they most probably view their relationship with him as a status
accommodation, which he interprets as an equalitarian relationship.
In the next section the status-income dilemma is illustrated in terms of
the janitor’s professional behavior and outlook, which are in marked
contrast with the tenants’ lack of respect for him.
PROFESSIONAL BEHAVIOR AND PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDES
It is likely that in every low-status occupation, where the worker
associates with the customer, the workers meet with certain
customer-oriented situations in which they typically behave in accordance
with standards that people have traditionally called "professional."
These low-status workers certainly do not label themselves
"professionals," nor do others so label them. Yet, there is ample
evidence that some of their behavior is ethically comparable to the
behavior exhibited by members of the so-called "professions."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
While it is true that the janitor’s self-conceptions are instrumental in
forming the superstructure of his professional behavior, the foundation of
such conduct is formed primarily out of situational requisites. This being
the case, his status-income dilemma is intensified, because he is
frequently called upon to act in a professional manner toward the
disrespectful tenants. Thus, whether mainly out of choice (expression of
self-conceptions) or out of necessity (fulfilment of situational
requisites), the relationship between janitor and tenant sometimes assumes
the character of that between professional and client.
The nature of the janitor’s work leads him to find out a great deal
about the personal lives of his tenants. He meets with many situations
which force him to decide how much and to whom he should tell what he knows
about them. Generally, he exercises scrupulous care in the handling of
this intimate knowledge, as he considers himself to be intrusted with it in
confidence.
The janitor gets some of his information from sources other than the
tenants themselves. When he acts as an informant (e.g., for insurance
checkers), he finds out a great deal about their personal affairs. One
tenant tells him about another. The garbage reveals much about them. From
these sources he acquires information of a very confidential nature.
The janitor also gets information directly from the tenants. They
confide in him not only about illnesses but also about personal problems.
As Janitor No. 20 remarked, "Some of them stop you and think they have to
tell you if they got a toothache."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Like the bartender and the barber, whose ascribed occupational status
beclouds the fact that they frequently share their customers’ personal
secrets, the janitor is placed in problematical situations requiring some
kind of ethical rules. When it is understood that occupational problems
which accrue from the same kinds of situations are basically the same
without respect to status, then the similar receipt of confidences by the
janitor, the lawyer, or the bartender becomes clear. These workers are, in
this instance, in the kind of situation which requires them to protect the
customer’s personal secrets. Whether the disposition of these secrets
involves as little as remaining silent or as much as stretching the truth,
the workers protect their relationship with the customer by protecting his
confidences. Likewise, in other given kinds of work situations which
require the solution of ethical problems, the worker-customer relationship
becomes overly complicated unless the worker makes and observes appropriate
rules. Such ethical rules are not simply a matter of honorable
self-conceptions or formalized professional codes. They are fundamentally a
matter of situational requirements, irrespective of personal and
occupational status.
Another area in which professional behavior is found concerns the
janitor’s relationships with overamorous tenants. Janitor No. 12
described what he considers to be the proper procedure for easing
gracefully out of such a delicate predicament:
Another thing about janitors—lots of women try to get you up in
apartment just "to talk" or for some phony excuse. When you walk in they
are on couch, ask you to sit down, and that means only one thing. When that
happens to me and I begin to sweat, I know I better leave. Thing is not to
refuse them so they get embarrassed, so I act dumb. I excuse myself and say
I forgot about water running some place which I must shut off right away.
It’s hard to do, but it’s best.
One can easily imagine hearing the bishop advise the young minister or
the elderly doctor instruct the young doctor in a similar vein. The
minister and the doctor must be prepared to meet such situations in a like
fashion. The janitor instructs tenants to call him for repairs only during
daylight hours, except for what he considers to be genuine
emergencies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yet another cluster of work situations wherein the janitor exhibits
professional
behavior concerns those occasions when he is called upon to do
mechanical work for the tenants. The most clear-cut evidence of
professional behavior in this area was submitted by Janitor No. 11.
Some of the repair work the tenant is responsible for and I’m supposed
to charge for it. Well, if I replace some glass that costs me three and a
half dollars, I may charge the tenant a half dollar or two dollars more for
my labor, depending on how much she can afford. If it’s a little thing and
the tenant isn’t well off, I won’t charge her anything for it if she’s
supposed to pay.
The janitor’s practice of charging for repairs on the basis of the
customer’s ability to pay is a high standard of service—quite in the
tradition of the medical profession—and he knows it.
THE DILEMMA
The janitor’s professional behavior, together with his substantial
income, contradicts what he believes are his tenants’ conceptions of him.
His struggle to gain their respect is a struggle for status. His high
standards of conduct constitute a way of favorably influencing their
estimation of his worth. Still, he finds that tenants regard him as hardly
more than a janitor. He strongly resents their failure properly to
recognize him, particularly in the case of the fourflushers. As Janitor No.
18 bitterly remarked:
They’re the kind that are very important. They think you’re a
fireman—should drop everything and run to them. They adopt a superior
attitude: "I’m the tenant and you’re the janitor." Like the East and the
West in that saying. Confidentially, a lot of us janitors could buy out
most tenants. They put on airs and try to be bossy.
The janitor has a higher income than many of the tenants; yet, the
latter "adopt a superior attitude." So he does considerable soul-searching
to seek a satisfactory explanation of his relatively low status. The
conversation which we had with Janitor No. 28 is in point.
INTERVIEWER: What things are janitors touchy about?
JANITOR: A lot of tenants figure he’s just a goddamn janitor, a servant.
Here [with "rich tenants] it’s not so bad. You say something to them and
they [the "bad" tenants] say, "Hell, you’re nothing but a janitor." Or when
you’re talking to even a working man and you tell him you’re a janitor, he
smiles—you know, people think there’s nothing lower than a janitor. You
get that feeling that they’re looking down on you, because you’re working
for them. I know I feel that way sometimes. During the depression I was
making better than most, so what the hell. It’s good earned money.
INTERVIEWER: Well, why do you say you get that feeling that they are
looking down on you? Why do you feel so sensitive?
JANITOR: In different places you hear people talk janitor this and
janitor that, and they say they’d never be a goddamn janitor. So you think
people here must say and think the same, but not to you. It makes you feel
funny sometimes.
It is noteworthy that Janitor No. 28 does not reject his idea of the
tenants’ definition of a janitor. For that matter, virtually no other
janitor does so either. To explain this, it is necessary to understand how
the janitor relates himself to other janitors in terms of the occupational
title.
The individual janitor strongly identifies himself with the name
"janitor," despite his belief that tenants look down on janitors. Their
view does not annoy
him very much because he, too, looks down on other janitors. He
feels that he is different from and better than other janitors. So, when
tenants (nonjanitors) speak disparagingly of janitors, he does not resent
it because of the group solidarity in the occupation, for, in reality,
there is little such solidarity. Rather he resents it because his
self-conceptions are so involved in the name "janitor" and because the
tenants fail to recognize his individual worth. Thus, when a janitor (No.
8) proudly states, "Tenants never treated me like a janitor," there
is no doubt that he agrees with their definition of janitor but that he, by
virtue of being singularly superior to other janitors, has been treated in
accordance with his conception of himself.
This attitude of "different and better" may be characteristic of the
members of any occupation (or other group) whose public reputation is one
of censorious stereotypes. This attitude implies that the individual member
agrees that most of his colleagues do have the characteristics attributed
to them by the public. The interesting question is: Why does the member
agree with the public? The study of janitors suggests that the answer is
likely to be in terms of (1) the nature of the member’s association with
his colleagues (he probably knows only a few of the "better" ones) and (2)
the status relationship between the member and the portion of the public he
associates with in his work.
Although the individual janitor capably defends himself from the
public’s conceptions of janitors, he still must perform tasks which
preclude advance to a higher occupational, hence social, status. The
janitorial reputation refers to the members’ personal characteristics and
work habits. Closely related to, but distinguishable from, these alleged
personal traits, are readily verified features of janitoring which involve
dirty work (e.g., shoveling coal and removing garbage). Work is
dirty when society defines it as such, that is, when society defines it as
being necessary but undesirable or even repugnant. Middle-class people seem
consciously to avoid such tasks. They apparently realize that the kind of
work one does is often more important than one’s income when it comes to
getting established as a member of the middle class. Yet, in a
materialistic society certain costly things, like a new automobile and a
television set, become symbolic of high status, even to them. This accounts
for the dilemma of the fourflushers.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Janitor No. 35, in summarizing the status-income dilemma, is painfully
aware that tenants took down on the janitor. Their trash, the garbage, is
undoubtedly the biggest single element in the janitor’s continued low
status. The removal of garbage is dirty work, incompatible with
middle-class status. It causes the janitor to subserve the tenants, all of
his individual attributes notwithstanding. The garbage symbolizes the
dilemmas of the janitor-tenant relationship.
CONCLUSION
This account of the status-income dilemma suggests that, since
high-prestige and high-income occupations are frequently distinguishable
from one another, the kind of work a person does is a crucially
qualifying factor in so far as his status possibilities are concerned.
Viewed another way, the trend toward professionalization of occupations
becomes an effort either to bring status recognition into line with high
income or to bring income into line with high-status recognition. The
janitor-tenant relationship has been graphically presented to call
attention to a dilemma which is so prevalent that it is apt to be
overlooked.
1 From , 1952, 57:486–493.
By permission of The University of Chicago Press.
2 The term "tenant" herein refers to the housewife, as the janitor
seldom comes in contact with the man of the house.
3 In the boiler-room the janitor sorts out the noncombustible garbage
from the combustible garbage, the former to be removed by a scavenger and
the latter to be burned by him in the furnace. In the course of these
sorting and burning operations he wittingly or unwittingly comes across
letters and other things which serve to identify the different bundles or
other forms of garbage accumulation. Thus, each of the tenants is readily
identified by her garbage. What the garbage reveals about the tenant over a
period of time enables the janitor to make intimate judgments about
her.