Greff Fabrics Blues, 1971 (x)

By the Fall of 1971, there were few blue-collar factory job openings for male workers being advertised in the want ads section in New York City newspapers; and neither the New York State Employment Agency nor the privately-owned employment agencies in New York City were able to find many permanent blue-collar jobs in any New York City area local factories for people who filled out applications at their offices.

So unless your father or some other family member or a friend already had a blue-collar factory or construction job--or some other kind of blue-collar job--in some New York City-based workplace, and knew of some job-opening at his or her workplace for which he or she could recommend you to be hired for, it was nearly impossible for an unemployed worker to get hired for some permanent blue-collar factory job in New York City in September 1971. Consequently, during that month, my only realistic possibility for finding a new permanent job seemed to be to either find some Manhattan firm that was willing to hire an "underemployed" liberal arts college graduate or try to locate some kind of clerical job in Manhattan; and since my typing speed in the Fall of 1971 did not yet exceed 50 words per minute, I only was then able to apply for clerical, shipping clerk or clerk-typist office jobs--and not straight typist, dictaphone-transciptionist, statistical typist or secretarial jobs--at this time.

But in the Fall of 1971, there were also few Manhattan firms that were willing to directly hire either a liberal arts college graduate or a male clerical worker; and by the Fall of 1971, most Manhattan firms that wished to hire clerical workers were now relying on private, "flesh-peddling" employment agencies in Manhattan, rather than the New York State Employment public agency, to screen out or refer job applicants for them.

So in September 1971, I ended up getting a haircut and shaving off my beard again, dressing up in a suit and tie, taking a bus and subway into Manhattan, and filling out a job application in the Snelling and Snelling "flesh-peddling" employment agency's East Side and Midtown Manhattan office. And after a few minutes of sitting in the reception area next to three or four other dressed-up, culturally straight-looking unemployed job-hunters, I was called to the desk of the Snelling and Snelling placement counselor/flesh-peddler who was an expert at finding some kind of job within the Manhattan business world for high school graduates and college graduates who were still in their early twenties.