Bok found it a uniform rule among his fellow-workers to do exactly the opposite to his own idea; there was an astonishing unanimity in working by the clock; where the hour of closing was five o'clock the preparations began five minutes before, with the hat and overcoat over the back of the chair ready for the stroke of the hour.This concert of action was curiously universal, no "overtime" was ever to be thought of, and, as occasionally happened when the work did go over the hour, it was not, to use the mildest term, done with care, neatness, or accuracy; it was, to use a current phrase, "slammed off." Every moment beyond five o'clock in which the worker was asked to do anything was by just so much an imposition on the part of the employer, and so far as it could be safely shown, this impression was gotten over to him.
There was an entire unwillingness to let business interfere with any anticipated pleasure or personal engagement.The office was all right between nine and five; one had to be there to earn a living; but after five, it was not to be thought of for one moment.The elevators which ran on the stroke of five were never large enough to hold the throng which besieged them.
The talk during lunch hour rarely, if ever, turned toward business, except as said before, when it dealt with underpaid services.In the spring and summer it was invariably of baseball, and scores of young men knew the batting averages of the different players and the standing of the clubs with far greater accuracy than they knew the standing or the discounts of the customers of their employers.In the winter the talk was all of dancing, boxing, or plays.
It soon became evident to Bok why scarcely five out of every hundred of the young men whom he knew made any business progress.They were not interested; it was a case of a day's work and a day's pay; it was not a question of how much one could do but how little one could get away with.The thought of how well one might do a given thing never seemed to occur to the average mind.
"Oh, what do you care?" was the favorite expression."The boss won't notice it if you break your back over his work; you won't get any more pay."And there the subject was dismissed, and thoroughly dismissed, too.
Eventually, then, Bok learned that the path that led to success was wide open: the competition was negligible.There was no jostling.In fact, travel on it was just a trifle lonely.One's fellow-travellers were excellent company, but they were few! It was one of Edward Bok's greatest surprises, but it was also one of his greatest stimulants.To go where others could not go, or were loath to go, where at least they were not, had a tang that savored of the freshest kind of adventure.And the way was so simple, so much simpler, in fact, than its avoidance, which called for so much argument, explanation, and discussion.One had merely to do all that one could do, a little more than one was asked or expected to do, and immediately one's head rose above the crowd and one was in an employer's eye--where it is always so satisfying for an employee to be! And as so few heads lifted themselves above the many, there was never any danger that they would not be seen.
Of course, Edward Bok had to prove to himself that his conception of conditions was right.He felt instinctively that it was, however, and with this stimulus he bucked the line hard.When others played, he worked, fully convinced that his play-time would come later.Where others shirked, he assumed.Where others lagged, he accelerated his pace.Where others were indifferent to things around them, he observed and put away the results for possible use later.He did not make of himself a pack-horse; what he undertook he did from interest in it, and that made it a pleasure to him when to others it was a burden.He instinctively reasoned it out that an unpleasant task is never accomplished by stepping aside from it, but that, unerringly, it will return later to be met and done.
Obstacles, to Edward Bok, soon became merely difficulties to be overcome, and he trusted to his instinct to show him the best way to overcome them.He soon learned that the hardest kind of work was back of every success; that nothing in the world of business just happened, but that everything was brought about, and only in one way--by a willingness of spirit and a determination to carry through.He soon exploded for himself the misleading and comfortable theory of luck: the only lucky people, he found, were those who worked hard.To them, luck came in the shape of what they had earned.There were exceptions here and there, as there are to every rule; but the majority of these, he soon found, were more in the seeming than in the reality.Generally speaking--and of course to this rule there are likewise exceptions, or as the Frenchman said, "All generalizations are false, including this one"--a man got in this world about what he worked for.
And that became, for himself, the rule of Edward Bok's life.
