16: Economy

Ira Glass

Well, in this moment of our presidential election process, let us consider the plight of a group whose sad fate we do not usually consider, a group we do not usually count among society's victims. I refer to moderate Republicans, because they have seen the future. And the future has a name. And the future's name is Bob Dole, the man now invariably referred to as the presumptive nominee, except of course by himself. He always refers to himself as Bob Dole.

And they are a pragmatic, roll up your sleeves, get the job done group, as a whole, the moderate Republicans are. And they will do what is necessary for victory in the fall to get the White House. But just last week, when we convened a small, unscientific panel of four Republicans, only one of the four was actually happy about the presumptive nominee.

Well, from WBEZ Chicago, it is Your Radio Playhouse. I'm Ira Glass. In our program today, politics, economics, you know, the big picture.

And later on in our program, we hire two temp workers. And we put them to work doing a radio story about being temp workers. And these guys aren't office workers. These guys are part of the massive number of workers in our country right now who do temp work in factories and industrial settings.

That will be Act Two. That means later. Because right now, we're on Act One, Presumptiveness.

The Republicans we convened for our panel were these people, and gave very generously of their time, I should say, because the power went out in Navy Pier in the middle of our interviews. So these people not only-- we started our interview, then we had to take them out for drinks, and then we had to bring them back. So this is not just presumptiveness, but it's presumptiveness on the rocks. That's what this segment is.

Our Republicans were [? Will Tinken, ?] a bonds trader, Diane Cohen, an attorney who is, I think it'd be more accurate to describe her as a libertarian than a moderate Republican, but still shared some views with these guys. [? Brian Castle, ?] a bonds trader and money manager and 43rd Ward Republican committeeman. And Dan Parisi, who owns a pizza restaurant out in the suburbs and also works as a telephone technician for Ameritech. And as of last Tuesday, this was Junior Tuesday, before Super Tuesday, before the New York primary, before Bob Dole was fully named the presumptive nominee, Will was the only one of the four people in our panel who would look you square in the eye and actually say he had a favorite candidate.

Ira Glass

At the time, Dan and Brian were still deciding between Dole and Forbes. Diane described herself as "off the map," no candidate at all. They all said they wanted the next president to be somebody who would reduce the size of government, cut regulations. Brian and Dan were especially forceful about the idea of eliminating the federal deficit. And so I proposed a theoretical candidate to our panel, somebody who would balance the federal budget in just a few years, somebody who promises to reduce the size of government and cut the capital gains tax, somebody who is for the death penalty and tougher sentences for juvenile offenders, somebody who is pro-choice. All four of them said they would at least be curious to hear more about such a candidate. Or as Diane put it--

Ira Glass

And then I revealed to them that this theoretical candidate, the person who I was describing to them as an acceptable moderate Republican, was, if you haven't guessed this already, President Clinton. This is where he stands on these issues.

Ira Glass

For many people, the coming presidential election is a lot like the last one in one significant way. For these people, there is only one issue. They do not like Bill Clinton. But maybe, maybe, moderate Republicans could be persuaded over to Bill Clinton's side, the way that moderate Democrats in droves, in masses, in national waves, were persuaded over to Ronald Reagan's side and George Bush's side-- once, anyway. I enlisted a little help to find out.

Ira Glass

Now I should say that at this point, the panel looked around at each other, and everybody was shaking their heads. This was clearly not working with our panel. And this might seem like an odd approach for Gary LaPaille to take.

But according to newspaper reports, to differentiate President Clinton and Bob Dole, who share many of the same stands on many issues, White House officials are saying that they're going to play up the age and generation difference. Gary LaPaille is basically giving us a preview here of what we're going to be hearing throughout the next few months as we get into the general election. Gary LaPaille is saying what basically any leading Democratic politician will be saying about the president at this moment. And what was interesting about it was it was not persuasive with our panel.

Ira Glass

A brisk discussion of the economy followed this. People were astonishingly well informed, I should say. They threw around budget numbers and dates and specifics about the first Clinton budget and the second Clinton budget and consequences for Social Security.

And what was interesting was that none of the Republicans gave President Clinton any of the credit for the eight million jobs created over the last four years, or the rising stock market, or the record number of new small business starts. Our panelists said that the normal business cycle would've done all of that anyway. They pointed out that among these jobs were a disproportionate number of low-wage jobs.

And even the one area where President Clinton did stick his neck out, on his first budget, which did make dramatic cuts in the federal deficit, even here, they gave the president no credit. The cuts were not deep enough and not done with real conviction on his part, they said. Gary LaPaille, however, kept trying.

Ira Glass

Of course, the thing that bothers these Republicans the most about Bill Clinton, his waffling on the issues, is something that the presumptive Republican nominee does plenty of as well. Bob Dole has gone back and forth on the "No new taxes" pledge. For a while, when Pat Buchanan was scoring lots of votes with economic populism, Republican-style, Bob Dole tried to pick it up. Bob Dole even wavered on abortion rights a few weeks ago on television. But as Brian Castle on our panel pointed out, our panel still prefers Bob Dole's wavering to the president's.

Ira Glass

See, because I wonder, as somebody observing this process, if in the end, whether it's Dole or Clinton in the White House, if we'll end up with significantly different policies coming out of the White House. That is, under the Clinton presidency, what we've seen is the debate driven by the Republicans in Congress. And that's certain to continue even in a Dole presidency. And the president, if he's a kind of accommodator, who either Clinton or Dole is, will simply follow the political tide to where it goes and get similar results.

Ira Glass

Will Tinken, Diane Cohen, Brian Castle, and Dan Parisi.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "LOVE ME" BY ELVIS PRESLEY]

Ira Glass

Act Two, The Economy. And let's begin this act with the man who made the economy a national issue again and the man who he steals all his best lines from.

Ira Glass

Well, that was Patrick J. Buchanan. And did you ever wonder what that J stands for, huh? Could it be, could it be Jesse? Well, no. It couldn't. And of course, Patrick J. Buchanan's prescriptions for our nation are very different than those offered by Jesse Jackson.

Thanks to Patrick Buchanan, we've had about a month of front-page, front-burner discussion of what is happening in the economy. And to review those facts briefly, I find one phrase coming to my lips. It is a phrase, I have to say, that has never come to my lips before, kind of a radio phrase, and that phrase is "Let's do the numbers."

[MUSIC PLAYING - "WE'RE IN THE MONEY" BY DAVE MCKENNA]

A New York Times survey shows that 1/3 of all American households have had someone laid off since 1980. 1/10 of the adults in this country say that a layoff precipitated a major family crisis. And while most people who get laid off do find new jobs, 2/3 of them do not find jobs that paid as much as their old jobs. Median wages in this country have fallen 3% since 1979, adjusted for inflation, while stock prices have set record levels and corporate profits have risen.

And one way that lots of businesses have helped their bottom lines is by replacing full-time workers with temporary workers and with contract workers. And one sign of the times is that the largest employer in the United States, outside of the government of course, the largest private employer is now a temp agency, Manpower, Incorporated. They send out 800,000 temps a year. And to give you a sense of just how big that is, let's compare that with some other numbers. Could we have that music again, please?

[MUSIC PLAYING - "WE'RE IN THE MONEY" BY DAVE MCKENNA]

General Motors only has 347,000 employees in North America. Boeing only has 106,000.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "WE'RE IN THE MONEY" BY DAVE MCKENNA]

Wouldn't it be irritating if every time somebody says a number on the radio, they would just be going along, and they'd just be talking about this and that and this and that, and then suddenly they'd mention 14, and you hear--

[MUSIC PLAYING - "WE'RE IN THE MONEY" BY DAVE MCKENNA]

It would be like some weird, distorted, adult Sesame Street nightmare, is what it would be.

Although it is the largest employer in the country, when you visit Manpower's downtown Chicago office, it doesn't feel like it's the outpost of a corporate giant. It feels like what it is, a small office, just seven people, with the idiosyncrasies of any small office. For example, where other offices might use Post-it notes or those "While you were out" message pads, these people use coasters, round, with gold borders, left over from some promotional something years ago. But Manpower is as good a vantage point as any for observing trends in the economy. Manpower spokesperson Stephanie Black says that in the last five years, the nature of the temp business has changed a lot as companies have looked for ways to lay off permanent staff and replace them, as needed, with temps.

Ira Glass

While Manpower has been the beneficiary of these changes with the increased business, Stephanie Black takes pains to say that Manpower did not create the shift in the way that corporations hire or lay off workers. It simply responded.

It responded well, though. Some companies use so many dozens of temps all the time that Manpower sends a full-time Manpower representative to work on-site at the company to coordinate all the temps. And while 40% of Manpower's business is office workers and 40% is industrial workers, the fastest-growing part of its business, rising from nothing to 20% just in the last few years, is a category whose very existence tells you a lot about what's going on in the economy. These are technical workers.

Ira Glass

This is the kind of work that 10 or 15 years ago might have been done by full-time employees. Now having said all that, it's important to note that one reason that Manpower has become the largest employer in the country is that it gives the people who work for it a fairly good deal, health insurance, paid vacation, and decent money. Skilled secretaries from the Chicago office make from $9 an hour to $16, and Manpower will train them to do particular jobs that it knows there's a market for.

But to get to the bottom of what it's like to be a temp in today's economy, we at this radio program decided we needed to go to the source. And so we hired two temp workers ourselves. And when they showed up at the radio station, we told them that their job while they were working for us was to prepare their own radio stories about what it's like to be a temp.

The two guys we got came from an agency called Labor Temps, whose motto is "Yes, we can." As opposed to most of the temp agencies we called with this assignment, who told us, no, they could not. Our two temp workers were named Lee and Tito. And they normally don't get sent to office jobs like this. Normally, these guys do light industrial work, general labor, factory work. Two of our producers, Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike, took them into the radio studio with a list of possible questions they might use in preparing their radio reports about being a temp.

Ira Glass

That's Lee, who made the little tortilla joke towards Tito. He was constantly ribbing him with these little ethnic-- I don't even know the word that we should use here in polite company on the radio, just a little ethnic ribbing. And just so you know, Tito gave as good as he got. Here's how he described Lee when we asked him to describe Lee for our stories.

Ira Glass

I should say that they seemed to have a lot of fun doing their stories, despite these two little quotes, as you will hear presently. The assignment was profile your fellow temp. So in other words, Lee interviewed Tito and did a story about Tito's experience. And Tito interviewed Lee and did a story about Lee's experience. We have two reports for you. The first one that we'll hear is the report that Lee prepared about Tito.

Lee

Hi, I'm Lee. I work at Labor Temps with Tito. Tito, he's Puerto Rican, young, about 21. He's got tattoos, gym shoes, loose-fitting clothes, and a kind of "what's up for lunch" attitude. When you work at a Labor Temp, you get up early in the morning and go to an old garage-looking place and wait around with a bunch of people waiting to get work.

Lee

All kinds of people work at Labor Temps, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, black, white, lots of women. Everyone's there for a different reason. Some work one day a week for beer money. Some are trying to support their families. For me, it's mostly a part-time thing.

My main job is doing some floors with a friend of mine, Mike. I do some graphics. I worked that about six years. I have knowledge in that field. And I do some computer programming, because I went to DeVry a couple years before I ran out of cash.

I started about two years ago at Labor Temps when I was laid off a graphics job. Here's what Tito did before working with Labor Temps.

Tito says as he makes about $150 a week at Labor Temps. Selling drugs, he can make five times that in a single day.

Lee

Temp agencies and the factories which call these agencies for temporary workers don't care that Tito spent six months in county jail. They don't care because they're mostly jobs nobody wants, garbage jobs. Most jobs that are temp jobs only give minimum wage. It's hard to have any strikes against you like Tito. He didn't finish the eighth grade.

Lee

For Your Radio Playhouse, I'm Lee, the temp.

Ira Glass

Well, that was the story that Lee did about Tito. Next, we have the story that Tito did about Lee.

Tito

I'm Tito. I work with Lee. Lee's been temping a lot longer than me, and he's seen some crazy jobs. He's worked at different agencies, but he's been in Labor Temps the longest. Lee had one assignment through an agency that lasted a whole year.

That's the funny thing. Temporary doesn't mean "short." It means no benefits, no pensions, no job security. That's why they hire temp workers. Some companies run on temp workers, all three shifts. They keep the smallest possible staff of full-time workers, just to keep everything running and organized.

Most places we go, though, there's a mix of permanent and temp workers. It's a weird relationship. Sometimes the bosses treat you better than the permanents. Sometimes they treat you worse. Sometimes we work faster than the permanents, and they don't like it. They'll mess with you.

Once, Lee worked at a factory that made tar sealers. The tar sealers were delivered through these big pipes.

Tito

Sometimes, companies offer you full-time jobs. That happened to me once, but it fell through at the last minute. I would take pretty much any full-time job, $5, $6, $7 an hour. Anything's better than $4.25 an hour. Lee feels different.

Tito

For Your Radio Playhouse, I'm Tito the temp.

Our program continues in a minute. You're listening to Your Radio Playhouse.

Ira Glass

Act Three, Dad. Well, we asked Lisa Buscani if she had anything to contribute to our program today about the economy. Lisa is a Chicago poet and writer, performer, winner of the National Poetry Slam, now resides in New York City. And she said she did have something. She had a story about her father.

Lisa Buscani

When I remember him during that time, that time that will exist "forever," in quote marks, emphasized heavily to save the family from having to actually discuss it at length, it is morning. It is always morning because no matter how many talk shows or war movies he stayed up to watch the night before, he rises with the sun or its winter absence.

He rises because there is work in the morning. There always has been. Either it was assigned to him, or he found it himself. But there is work, and morning is the time to begin it.

I hear his knees popping as he sits at the kitchen table with black coffee and his cigs to read two papers, the Toledo Blade and the Detroit Free Press. Two papers because that would lower the odds, that would double the chances, increase the opportunities to find work, work that he has recently lost. When I see him, there is no work.

It is northwestern Ohio in the middle of its continuous recession. He has shaken both papers of all of their news, and there is no work. It is all he can do to keep from dropping his pride like the seventh veil and answering the aluminum siding or used car sales ads.

Some days are better than others, though. On the good days, there is work. And he circles the ad with an exuberant, victorious red pen and heads upstairs to his office. His office, for as long as I can remember, had a huge desk cluttered with spec sheets and promotional brochures featuring whatever he was selling at the time, bright, four-colored photos of appliances or mattresses arranged in ways that would prove these items to be necessary, essential to the customer's well-being and happiness. Whatever he was selling, it was always essential and necessary.

But when I see him, the desk is bare. The clutter has been swept away. Even his answering machine message is empty, because he has no company that he proudly represents, no business cards.

Time has become his greatest enemy. His unemployment insurance is running out. He has long since passed the age when most companies will consider hiring him. He leaves the age blank empty on the application form, but personnel managers still rush him through interviews after one look at his tastefully graying temples and some simple math on his job experience.

Time has become a shifting, empty, immemorable thing. Two months becomes six months. Six months becomes a year. He tries to fill it by painting the house and organizing the basement.

I see my mom, weak with the weight of it. She's pale from going to work and arriving home without the sun. I see her lips thin and her knuckles whiten as she puts a bill payment off another month, as they max out another credit card, as they second mortgage the house.

It has never been this bad. Together, they put three kids through college, and it was never this bad. She's struggling with her tongue, with her ever-present desire to scream at him, "Do something." Everything they built together is slowly crumbling, and she wonders if they'll survive.

When I see him, he's typing cover letters, a hesitant, two-fingered pecking on an old Smith Corona with a fading ribbon. The family smiles quietly and rewrites, corrects his grammar, telling him, "Daddy, take this out. You sound too desperate." But after all, you write what you know.

And what he knows is he has 30 years of experience, 30 years of smiling when he didn't want to, 30 years of forcing laughter into the phone, of looking into narrow, skeptical eyes, of fast food, 30 years of paperwork, of business trips in cut-rate motels, of driving backwater towns in white-out storms. 30 years of the word "no," 30 years of straight commission, which is the hardest, toughest, way to go. And god dammit, that's got to be good enough for someone. He's living with the firm knowledge that there is nothing that he cannot do and the terrifying reality that he will not be allowed to do it.

I see us talking, my dad and I, about his unemployment and his prospects for the future. Nothing is ever said because most of the time, there is nothing to say. I wish him luck and faith, because sometimes only the intangibles can set things right.

When I see him, he thinks he is alone. But he is not. All across Ohio, the Midwest, America, thousands of white, middle-aged men just like Dad are attending workshops, haunting placement agencies and training centers, filling their chests with the ghosts of their bravado, straining to understand why what once worked for them does not work any longer. They play their losing game the way they always have, pulling desperately on bootstraps, noses frantically to grindstones.

These men refuse to question the validity of the business structures that they've established, a vicious system that whipped around and bit them the first chance it got. It is this ignorant, blind faith that makes me think, "Good. Let the men who made the rules and carry out the policies suffer the consequence of these policies. They chose management's pay scale. Let them live without the protection of a union. Let the most privileged class of our society taste the fear and frustration that the rest of us know on a daily basis."

Then I think of my dad, how he waited, how time weighed him down and wore on him like the sea over stone. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Ira Glass

Act Four, Economic Development, Chicago Style. Well, we as a nation are not helpless in the face of broad economic forces. We can take action. We can spur economic development. Witness one of the high visibility projects put into place by the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois at a cost of $156 million of taxpayer money, Navy Pier.

Navy Pier is a downtown waterfront project on Lake Michigan, not far from the heart of downtown Chicago, but not in it, either. Lots of cities have development projects like this. There's Faneuil Hall in Boston, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, New York's South Street Seaport.

Navy Pier features a big Ferris wheel and the Chicago Children's Museum and one of those IMAX movie theaters. There's convention floor space. There's some shopping and a food court. The atmosphere is that of a second-rate mall anywhere in America. The roof leaks. The food's nothing special. The stores aren't the kind you'd go out of your way to visit.

We at this radio program are very familiar with Navy Pier because Chicago's public radio station recently moved to a new building located halfway between the Ferris wheel and the convention space. Our staff has spent so many hours walking the drafty hallway between the food court and our offices that associate producer Peter Clowney has committed to memory the song "Here Come the Hawks," the official theme song of Chicago's hockey team that, for a while, for reasons we've never been able to fully understand or explain, played incessantly in the hallway PA system.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "HERE COME THE HAWKS" BY J. SWAYZEE]

We have watched with fascination some of the strange conventions that have come and gone here at Navy Pier. One day, strolling to the end of the pier for some fresh air, I looked into Exhibit Hall A and saw an entire carnival midway, complete with full-size rides, multicolored lights, loud music, equipment so massive it's hard to comprehend how they even get it indoors. But here it was, under the artificial lights, during the dead of Chicago winter.

A few months before, we all gawked at a convention whose purpose was to help small businesses market their products to Generation X. This was, as far as we could determine, American capitalism at a disturbingly odd nadir, sunk so low you didn't want to see it there, trying to market to a generation whose supposed defining characteristic is that it's comprised of non-materialist, non-conformist, slacker types who, above all, resent products being marketed to them.

Ira Glass

We can only wonder if the Generation X karaoke contest would have been more popular had there actually been an audience in the hall to participate. But the Generation X convention was one of the least successful events at the pier. The most important single fact about this $156 million economic development project is that, by all accounts, it is a huge, huge success.

Crowds are twice as large as anyone expected, three and a half million in just six months. People even came during the winter. And at many stores and restaurants, business is good.

Ira Glass

Mary Beth Pullman owns the store Oh Yes Chicago, which looks like an upscale Gap store with blond wood floors, selling T-shirts and caps with the word Chicago on them in various designs. None of them, she'll tell you proudly, with the hackneyed old Al Capone, Chicago mobster, Mrs. O'Leary's cow images. The T-shirt she was showing me sells 25 or so on a typical day at $15 a shirt. Most of her customers are from out of town.

Ira Glass

These are the kinds of jobs and businesses that have been created so far for $156 million. Mary Beth Pullman's happy at the pier. Her sales have exceeded expectations and projections. But like most businesses anywhere, it takes a while before you realize real profits. The pier's been open less than a year. She figures it'll be another two before the store is comfortably profitable. And in the meantime, she's earning less than she did in her old job renting shopping center space. Fortunately, she has a spousal unit of her own out in the suburbs earning money, so she doesn't have to draw a salary from the store right now.

Ira Glass

This store has seven employees, and they earn between $6.00 and $8.00 an hour, which is about par for Navy Pier. That's $12,000 to $16,000 a year, not much if you're trying to raise a family. But most of the people you see working at the pier are in their 20s and early 30s, just starting out. Nigel, for example, works in the T-shirt store half the week and uses the money to go to college the other half. He lives with his parents, hopes to go to law school, take international law.

Ira Glass

In fact, many workers on the Pier said they were glad to have these jobs. They didn't complain. The one maintenance man told me that he made more money at the hair care products company he used to work for, before layoffs sent him to the pier. He was looking for another job.

Navy Pier officials are tight-lipped about the number of jobs that have been created for $156 million in taxpayer money. They say no economic projection or impact statements were ever done for the project. But after weeks of refusing to provide any numbers for this radio story, they finally turned over a few. Let's do them.

[MUSIC PLAYING - "WE'RE IN THE MONEY" BY DAVE MCKENNA]

The Navy Pier Authority says they have 137 full-time and 451 part-time employees. These are the people who work for the pier itself, security people, parking, maintenance. The Navy Pier Authority would not provide information on the salary ranges of its employees, or even a breakdown of employees' jobs. The Pier Authority refused to allow us to interview any pier employees for this report.

In addition to the pier employees, there are 37 stores and restaurants located on the pier. At the very most, we figure they employ 600 additional people, bringing the pier total, at most, to 1,200 workers. The government put $156 million dollars into the pier. That works out to $130,000 per job at the very least. And remember that more than half of these jobs are part-time.

Well, we had no idea if this was good or not, $130,000 per job created. So we called someone to find out. Joan Fitzgerald is a urban planner at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ira Glass

Joan Fitzgerald says that it used to be common for governments to create-- you know, we played that David Brancaccio music, and now I feel like I'm reading exactly like him. Now I'm going to try to read like myself. It's irresistible, once you play that Marketplace music, it has an effect on you that's so profound. All right.

Joan Fitzgerald-- friends at home, I just want you to try this yourselves. Get a copy of that Dave McKenna "We're in the Money." And good luck finding it, because it's out of print. But let's not even go into that. And then play this thing. And I swear, you start to read like David Brancaccio on Marketplace. Well, I'm just going to read like him. That's what I'm going to do for this section of the story.

Joan Fitzgerald says that it used to be common for governments to create jobs for $10,000 or $12,000 per job, but there's been a bidding war to pull in employers and businesses. $130,000 per job is high, but still a fraction of what Alabama just spent to get a Mercedes-Benz plant. And Joan Fitzgerald says that if Navy Pier helps bring tourists to the city and convention business and hotel business, then the investment makes more sense.

Ira Glass

Chicago city officials like Greg Longhini, assistant to the commissioner at the Department of Planning and Development, would prefer if we would not try to come up with a per-job cost at all for Navy Pier.

Ira Glass

In the middle of the atrium at Navy Pier, near the McDonald's and Oh Yes Chicago, a strolling troupe of a cappella singers called the Navy Pier Players pulls a few three- and four-year-olds from a crowd that numbers about 60.

[MUSIC - NAVY PIER PLAYERS SINGING]

Ira Glass

The three children being held in various singers' arms and laps stare blankly into the middle distance. Each of the Navy Piers Players is dressed as a different character. The lead singer is a Da Bears-style sports fan. There's Mrs. O'Leary, whose cow supposedly started the Chicago fire. There's a cheerleader and a nerdy college boy, a guy in a mock zoot suit and a wide brim hat, a sailor girl, and a female character whose gimmick is simply that she likes shopping.

They do four shows a day, five days a week. And they work up a sweat, all that pep, dancing and singing. Seeing them belt out an a cappella rendition of, say, "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the food court to a group of tourists and stunned-looking children, you do not think this is an easy job. Anything but.

Ira Glass

After the performance, I spoke with this woman, the one in the sailor costume. She carries an American flag and after every answer, gave me a little salute.

Ira Glass

350 people auditioned for these eight jobs. It may not be the greatest money in the world, but there aren't many full-time jobs for actors and singers in Chicago. And with two Navy Pier officials standing by to make sure no one said anything inappropriate, she said she was glad to get the work.

Ira Glass

Today's program was produced by Peter Clowney and by myself with Alix Spiegel, Nancy Updike, and Dolores Wilber. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Margy Rochlin, and Paul Tough. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia.

[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

If you want to buy a tape of this or other Playhouse programs, you can call us at WBEZ. If you want to give jobs to our two temp workers, Tito or Lee, you can call us for that reason, though we have received one call at least. 312-832-3380, our phone number here. Again, 312-832-3380.

And if you get the answering machine, just leave a message. We'll call you back when we can. You can email us at this email address, radio@well.com.

We broadcast from WBEZ Chicago. We'll be back next week with more stories of this American life. I'm Ira Glass.