158

HUJ\;IAN ORGANIZATION
"Banana i m e ~ '
Job Satisfaction and Infornlal Interaction
Donald F. Roy*
This paper undertakes description and exploratory analysis
of the social interaction which took place within a small work
group of factory machine operatives during a two-month
period of participant observation. The factual and ideational
materials which it presents lie at an intersection of two lines
of research interest and should, in their dual bearing, con-
tribute to both. Since the operatives were engaged in work
which involved the repetition of very simple operations over an
extra-long workday, six days a week, they were faced with
the problem of dealing with a formidable "beast of monot-
ony." Revelation of how the group utilized its resources to
combat that "beast" should merit the attention of those who
are seeking solution to the practical problem of job satisfac-
tion, or employee morale. It should also provide insights for
those who are trying to penetrate the mysteries of the small
group.
Convergence of these two lines of interest is, of course, no
new thing. Among the host of writers and researchers who
have suggested connections between "group" and "joy in
work" are Walker and Guest, observers of social interaction
on the automobile assembly line.l They quote assembly-line
workers as saying, "We have a lot of fun and talk all the
time,"2 and, "If it weren't for the talking and fooling, you'd
go nuts."3
wly account of how one group of machine operators kept
from "going nuts" in a situation of monotonous work activity
attempts to lay bare the tissues of interaction which made up
the content of their adjustment. The talking, fun, and fooling
which provided solution to the elemental problem of "psycho-
logical survival" will be described according to their embodi-
ment in intra-group relations. In addition, an unusual oppor-
* Dr. Roy is in the Department of Sociology, Duke University,
Durham, North Carolina.
1. Charles R. Walker and Robert H. Guest, The llIall 011 the As-
sembly Lille, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1952.
2. Ibid., p. 77.
3. Ibid., p. 68.
tunity for close observation of behavior involved in the
maintenance of group equilibrium was afforded by the for-
tuitous introduction of a "natural experiment." lVIy unwitting
injection of explosive materials into the stream of interaction
resulted in sudden, but temporary, loss of group interaction.
IVIy fellow operatives and I spent our long days of simple,
repetitive work in relative isolation from other employees of
the factory. Our line of machines was sealed off from other
work areas of the plant by the four walls of the clicking
room. The one door of this room was usually closed. Even
when it was kept open, during periods of hot weather, the
consequences were not social; it opened on an uninhabited
storage room of the shipping department. Not even the sounds
of work activity going on elsewhere in the factory carried to
this isolated work place. There were occasional contacts with
"outside" employees, usually on matters connected with the
work; but, with the exception of the daily calls of one fellow
who came to pick up finished materials for the next step in
processing, such visits were sporadic and infrequent.
IVloreover, face-to-face contact with members of the man-
agerial hierarchy were few and far between. Noone bearing
the title of foreman ever came around. The only company
official vvho showed himself more than once during the two-
month observation period was the plant superintendent. Evi-
dently overloaded with supervisory duties and production
problems which kept him busy elsewhere, he managed to pay
his respects every week or two. His visits were in the nature
of short, businesslike, but friendly exchanges. Otherwise he
confined his observable communications with the group to
occasional utilization of a public address system. During the
two-month period, the company president and the chief
chemist paid one friendly call apiece. One man, who mayor
may not have been of managerial status, was seen on various
occasions lurking about in a manner which excited suspicion.
Although no observable consequences accrued from the
peculiar visitations of this silent fellow, it was assumed that
he was some sort of efficiency expert, and he was referred to
as "The Snooper."
HUMAN ORGANIZATION 159
As far as our work group was concerned, this was truly a
situation of laissez-faire management. There was no interfer-
ence from staff experts, no hounding by time-study engineers
or personnel men hot on the scent of efficiency or good human
relations. Nor were there any signs of industrial democracy
in the form of safety, recreational, or production committees.
There was an international union, and there was a highly
publicized union-management cooperation program; but
actual interactional processes of cooperation were carried on
somewhere beyond my range of observation and without par-
ticipation of members of my work group. Furthermore, these
union-management get-togethers had no determinable connec-
tion with the problem of "toughing out" a twelve-hour day
at monotonous work.
Our work group was thus not only abandoned to its own
resources for creating job satisfaction, but left without that
basic reservoir of ill-will toward management which can
sometimes be counted on to stimulate the development of
interesting activities to occupy hand and brain. Lacking was
the challenge of intergroup conflict, that perennial source of
creative experience to fill the otherwise empty hours of mean-
ingless work routine.
4
The clicking machines were housed in a room approximately
thirty by twenty-four feet. They were four in number, set in
a row, and so arranged along one wall that the busy operator
could, merely by raising his head from his work, freshen his
reveries with a glance through one of three large barred win-
dows. To the rear of one of the end machines sat a long
cutting table; here the operators cut up rolls of plastic
materials into small sheets manageable for further processing
at the clickers. Behind the machine at the opposite end of
the line sat another table which was intermittently the work
station of a female employee who performed sundry scissors
operations of a more intricate nature on raincoat parts. Boxed
in on all sides by shelves and stocks of materials, this latter
locus of work appeared a cell within a cell.
The clickers were of the genus punching machines; of
mechanical construction similar to that of the better-known
punch presses, their leading features were hammer and block.
The hammer, or punching head, was approximately eight
inches by twelve inches at its flat striking surface. The descent
upon the block was initially forced by the operator, who ex-
erted pressure on a handle attached to the side of the hammer
head. A few inches of travel downward established electrical
connection for a sharp, power-driven blow. The hammer also
traveled, by manual guidance, in a horizontal plane to and
from, and in an arc around, the central column of the
machine. Thus the operator, up to the point of establishing
electrical connections for the sudden and irrevocable down-
ward thrust, had flexibility in maneuvering his instrument
over the larger surface of the block. The latter, approximately
twenty-four inches wide, eighteen inches deep, and ten inches
thick, was made, like a butcher's block, of inlaid hardwood;
it was set in the machine at a convenient waist height. On it
the operator placed his materials, one sheet at a time if leather,
stacks of sheets if plastic, to be cut with steel dies of assorted
4. Donald F. Roy, "Work Satisfaction and Social Reward in Quota
Achievement: An Analysis of Piecework Incentive," American So-
ciological Review, XVIII (October, 1953), 507- 514.
sizes and shapes. The particular die in use would be moved,
by hand, from spot to spot over the materials each time a cut
was made; less frequently, materials would be shifted on the
block as the operator saw need for such adjustment.
Introduction to the new job, with its relatively simple
machine skills and work routines, was accomplished with
what proved to be, in my experience, an all-time minimum of
job training. The clicking machine assigned to me was situated
at one end of the row. Here the superintendent and one of the
operators gave a few brief demonstrations, accompanied by
bits of advice which included a warning to keep hands clear
of the descending hammer. After a short practice period, at
the end of which the superintendent expressed satisfaction
with progress and potentialities, I was left to develop my
learning curve with no other supervision than that afforded
by members of the work group. Further advice and assistance
did come, from time to time, from my fellow operatives, some-
times upon request, sometimes unsolicited.
The Work Group
Absorbed at first in three related goals of improving my
clicking skill, increasing my rate of output, and keeping my
left hand unclicked, I paid little attention to my fellow
operatives save to observe that they were friendly, middle-
aged, foreign-born, full of advice, and very talkative. Their
names, according to the way they addressed each other, were
George, Ike, and Sammy.s George, a stocky fellow in his late
fifties, operated the machine at the opposite end of the line;
he, I later discovered, had emigrated in early youth from a
country in Southeastern Europe. Ike, stationed at George's
left, was tall, slender, in his early fifties, and Jewish; he had
come from Eastern Europe in his youth. Sammy, number three
man in the line, and my neighbor, was heavy set, in his late
fifties, and Jewish; he had escaped from a country in Eastern
Europe just before Hitler's legions had moved in. All three
men had been downwardly mobile as to occupation in recent
years. George and Sammy had been proprietors of small busi-
nesses; the former had been "wiped out" when his uninsured
establishment burned down; the latter had been entrepreneur-
ing on a small scale before he left all behind him to flee the
Germans. According to his account, Ike had left a highly
skilled trade which he had practiced for years in Chicago.
I discovered also that the clicker line represented a ranking
system in descending order from George to myself. George
not only had top seniority for the group, but functioned as a
sort of leadman. His superior status was marked in the fact
that he received five cents more per hour than the other
clickermen, put in the longest workday, made daily contact,
outside the workroom, with the superintendent on work
matters which concerned the entire line, and communicated
to the rest of us the directives which he received. The narrow
margin of superordination was seen in the fact that directives
were always relayed in the superintendent's name; they were
on the order of, "You'd better let that go now, and get on the
green. Joe says they're running low on the fifth floor," or,
5. All names used are fictitious.
160 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
"J oe says he wants two boxes of the 3-die today." The narrow
margin was also seen in the fact that the superintendent would
communicate directly with his operatives over the public
address system; and, on occasion, Ike or Sammy would leave
the workroom to confer with him for decisions or advice in
regard to work orders.
Ike was next to George in seniority, then Sammy. I was,
of course, low man on the totem pole. Other indices to status
differentiation lay in informal interaction, to be described
later.
With one exception, job status tended to be matched by
length of workday. George worked a thirteen-hour day, from
7 a.m. to 8 :30 p.m. Ike worked eleven hours, from 7 a.m. to
6 :30 p.m.; occasionally he worked until 7 or 7 :30 for an
eleven and a half- or a twelve-hour day. Sammy put in a
nine-hour day, from 8 a.m. to 5 :30 p.m. wIy twelve hours
spanned from 8 a.m. to 8 :30 p.m. \iV e had a half hour for
lunch, from 12 to 12 :30.
The female who worked at the secluded table behind
George's machine put in a regular plant-wide eight-hour shift
from 8 to 4 :30. Two women held this job during the period
of my employment; J\Iable was succeeded by Baby. Both were
Negroes, and in their late twenties.
A fifth clicker operator, an Arabian emigre called Boo,
worked a night shift by himself. He usually arrived about 7
p.m. to take over Ike's machine.
The Work
It was evident to me, before my first workday drew to a
weary close, that my clicking career was going to be a grim
process of fighting the clock, the particular timepiece in this
si tua tion being an old-fashioned alarm clock which ticked
away on a shelf near George's machine. I had struggled
through many dreary rounds with the minutes and hours
during the various phases of my industrial experience, but
never had I been confronted with such a dismal combination
of working conditions as the extra-long workday, the in-
finitesimal cerebral excitation, and the extreme limitation of
physical movement. The contrast with a recent stint in the
California oil fields was striking. This was no eight-hour
day of racing hither and yon over desert and foothills with a
rollicking crew of "roustabouts" on a variety of repair mis-
sions at oil wells, pipe lines, and storage tanks. Here there
were no afternoon dallyings to search the sands for horned
toads, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes, or to climb old wooden der-
ricks for raven's nests, with an eye out, of course, for the tell-
tale streak of dust in the distance which gave ample warning
of the approach of the boss. This was standing all day in one
spot beside three old codgers in a dingy room looking out
through barred windows at the bare walls of a brick ware-
house, leg movements largely restricted to the shifting of body
weight from one foot to the other, hand and arm movements
confined, for the most part, to a simple repetitive sequence of
place the die, --- punch the clicker, --- place the die,
--- punch the clicker, and intellectual activity reduced to
computing the hours to quitting time. It is true that from
time to time a fresh stacIe of sheets would have to be substituted
for the clicked-out old one; but the stack would have been
prepared by someone else, and the exchange would be only a
minute or two in the making. Now and then a box of finished
work would have to be moved back out of the way, and an
empty box brought up; but the moving back and the bringing
up involved only a step or two. And there was the half hour
for lunch, and occasional trips to the lavatory or the drinking
fountain to break up the day into digestible parts. But after
each momentary respite, hammer and die were moving again:
click, ---move die, ---click, ---move die.
Before the end of the first day, wIonotony was joined by
his twin brother, Fatigue. I got tired. wIy legs ached, and my
feet hurt. Early in the afternoon I discovered a tall stool and
moved it up to my machine to "take the load off my feet."
But the superintendent dropped in to see how I was "doing"
and promptly informed me that "we don't sit down on this
job." My reverie toyed with the idea of quitting the job and
looking for other work.
The next day was the same: the monotony of the work, the
tired legs and sore feet and thoughts of quitting.
The Game of Work
In discussing the factory operative's struggle to "cling to
the remnants of joy in work," Henri de J\1an makes the gen-
eral observations that "it is psychologically impossible to de-
prive any kind of work of all its positive emotional elements,"
that the worker will find some meaning in any activity as-
signed to him, a "certain scope for initiative which can satisfy
after a fashion the instinct for play and the creative impulse,"
that "even in the Taylor system there is found luxury of self-
detennination."6 De wIan cites the case of one worker who
,napped 13,000 incandescent bulbs a day; she found her outlet
for creative impulse, her self-determination, her meaning in
work by varying her wrapping movements a little from time
to time.
7
So did I search for some meaning in my continuous mincing
of plastic sheets into small ovals, fingers, and trapezoids. The
richness of possibility for creative expression previously dis-
covered in my experience with the "Taylor system"8 did not
reveal itself here. There was no piecework, so no piecework
game. There was no conflict with management, so no war
game. But, like the light bulb wrapper, I did find a "certain
scope for initiative," and out of this slight freedom to vary
activity, I developed a game of work.
The game developed was quite simple, so elementary, in
fact, that its playing was reminiscent of rainy-day preoccupa-
tions in childhood, when attention could be centered by the
hour on colored bits of things of assorted sizes and shapes.
But this adult activity was not mere pottering and piddling;
what it lacked in the earlier imaginative content, it made up
for in clean-cut structure. Fundamentally involved were: a)
variation in color of the materials cut, b) variation in shapes
6. Henri de Man, The Psychology of Socialism, Henry Holt and
Company, New York, 1927, pp. 80-81.
7. Ibid., p. 81.
8. Roy, op. cit.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION 161
of the dies used, and c) a process called "scraping the block."
The basic procedure which ordered the particular combina-
tion of components employed could be stated in the form: "As
soon as I do so many of these, I'll get to do those." If, for
example, production scheduled for the day featured small,
rectangular strips in three colors, the game might go: "As soon
as I finish a thousand of the green ones, I'll click some brown
ones." And, with success in attaining the objective of working
with brown materials, a new goal of "I'll get to do the
white ones" might be set. Or the new goal might involve
switching dies.
Scraping the block made the game more interesting by
adding to the number of possible variations in its playing; and,
what was perhaps more important, provided the only substan-
tial reward, save for going to the lavatory or getting a drink
of water, on days when work with one die and one color of
material was scheduled. As a physical operation, scraping the
block was fairly simple; it involved application of a coarse
file to the upper surface of the block to remove roughness and
unevenness resulting from the wear and tear of die penetra-
tion. But, as part of the intellectual and emotional content
of the game of work, it could be in itself a source of variation
in activity. The upper left-hand corner of the block could
be chewed up in the clicking of 1,000 white trapezoid pieces,
then scraped. Next, the upper right-hand corner, and so on
until the entire block had been worked over. Then, on the
next round of scraping by quadrants, there was the possibility
of a change of color or die to green trapezoid or white ov;l
pieces.
Thus the game of work might be described as a continuous
sequence of short-range production goals with achievement
rewards in the form of activity change. The superiority of this
relatively complex and self-determined system over the tech-
nically simple and outside-controlled job satisfaction injections
experienced by Milner at the beginner's table in a shop of the
feather industry should be immediately apparent:
Twice a day our work was completely changed to
break the monotony. First Jennie would give us feathers
of a brilliant green, then bright orange or a light blue
or black. The "ohs" and "ahs" that came from the girls
at each change was proof enough that this was an effective
way of breaking the monotony of the tedious work. 9
But a hasty conclusion that I was having lots of fun playing
my clicking game should be avoided. These games were not as
interesting in the experiencing as they might seem to be from
the telling. Emotional tone of the activity was low, and in-
tellectual currents weak. Such rewards as scraping the block
or "getting to do the blue ones" were not very exciting, and
the stretches of repetitive movement involved in achieving
them were long enough to permit lapses into obsessive reverie.
Henri de Man speaks of "clinging to the remnants of joy in
work," and this situation represented just that. How tenacious
the clinging was, how long I could have "stuck it out" with
my remnants, was never determined. Before the first week
was out this adjustment to the work situation was complicated
by other developments. The game of work continued, but in
9. Lucille Milner, Education of An American Liberal, Horizon
Press, New York, 1954, p. 97.
a different context. Its influence became decidedly subordi-
nated to, if not completely overshadowed by, another source
of job satisfaction.
Informal Social Activity of the Work Group:
Times and Themes
The change came about when I began to take serious note
of the social activity going on around me; my attentiveness to
this activity came with growing involvement in it. What I
heard at first, before I started to listen, was a stream of dis-
connected bits of communication which did not make much
sense. Foreign accents were strong and referents were not
joined to coherent contexts of meaning. It was just "jabber-
ing." What I saw at first, before I began to observe, was
occasional flurries of horseplay so simple and unvarying in
pattern and so childish in quality that they made no strong
bid for attention. For example, Ike would regularly switch
off the power at Sammy's machine whenever Sammy made a
trip to the lavatory or the drinking fountain. Correlatively,
Sammy invariably fell victim to the plot by making an attempt
to operate his clicking hammer after returning to the shop.
And, as the simple pattern went, this blind stumbling into the
trap was always followed by indignation and reproach from
Sammy, smirking satisfaction from Ike, and mild paternal
scolding from George. My interest in this procedure was at
first confined to wondering when Ike would weary of his
tedious joke or when Sammy would learn to check his power
switch before trying the hammer.
But, as I began to pay closer attention, as I began to
develop familiarity with the communication system, the dis-
connected became connected, the nonsense made sense, the
obscure became clear, and the silly actually funny. And, as
the content of the interaction took on more and more meaning,
the interaction began to reveal structure. There were "times"
and "themes," and roles to serve their enaction. The interac-
tion had subtleties, and I began to savor and appreciate them.
I started to record what hitherto had seemed unimportant.
Times
This emerging awareness of structure and meaning included
recognition that the long day's grind was broken by inter-
ruptions of a kind other than the formally instituted or idio-
syncratically developed disjunctions in work routine previously
described. These additional interruptions appeared in daily
repetition in an ordered series of informal interactions. They
were, in part, but only in part and in very rough comparison,
similar to those common fractures of the production process
known as the coffee break, the coke break, and the cigarette
break. Their distinction lay in frequency of occurrence and
in brevity. As phases of the daily series, they occurred almost
hourly, and so short were they in duration that they disrupted
work activity only slightly. Their significance lay not so much
in their function as rest pauses, although it cannot be denied
that physical refreshment was involved. Nor did their chief
importance lie in the accentuation of progress points in the
passage of time, although they could perform that function
162
HUMAN ORGANIZATION
far more strikingly than the hour hand on the dull face of
George's alarm clock. If the daily series of interruptions be
likened to a clock, then the comparison might best be made
with a special kind of cuckoo clock, one with a cuckoo which
can provide variation in its announcements and can create
such an interest in them that the intervening minutes become
filled with intellectual content. The major significance of the
interactional interruptions lay in such a carryover of interest.
The physical interplay which momentarily halted work activ-
ity would initiate verbal exchanges and thought processes to
occupy group members until the next interruption. The group
interactions thus not only marked off the time; they gave it
content and hurried it along.
Most of the breaks in the daily series were designated as
"times" in the parlance of the clicker operators, and they
featured the consumption of food or drink of one sort or
another. There was coffee time, peach time, banana time, fish
time, coke time, and, of course, lunch time. Other interrup-
tions, which formed part of the series but were not verbally
recognized as times, were window time, pickup time, and
staggered quitting times of Sammy and Ike. These latter
unnamed times did not involve the partaking of refreshments.
IVIy attention was first drawn to this times business during
my first week of employment when I was encouraged to join
in the sharing of two peaches. It was Sammy 'who provided
the peaches; he drew them from his lunch box after making
the announcement, "Peach time!" On this first occasion I
refused the proffered fruit, but thereafter regularly consumed
my half peach. Sammy continued to provide the peaches and
to make the "Peach time!" announcement, although there
were days when Ike would remind him that it was peach
time, urging him to hurry up with the mid-morning snack.
Ike invariably complained about the quality of the fruit, and
his complaints fed the fires of continued banter between peach
donor and critical recipient. I did find the fruit a bit on the
scrubby side but felt, before I achieved insight into the func-
tion of peach time, that Ike was showing poor manners by
looking a gift horse in the mouth. I wondered why
continued to share his peaches with such an ingrate. .
Banana time followed peach time by approximately an
hour. Sammy again provided the refreshments, namely, one
banana. There was, however, no four-wav sharing of
banana. Ike would gulp it down by himself after surreptitious-
ly extracting it from Sammy's lunch box, kept on a shelf be-
hind Sammy's work station. Each morning, after making the
snatch, Ike would call out, "Banana time!" and proceed to
down his prize while Sammy made futile protests and denun-
ciations. George would join in with mild remonstrances,
sometimes scolding Sammy for making so much fuss. The
banana was one which Sammy brought for his own consump-
tion at lunch time; he never did get to eat his banana, but
kept bringing one for his lunch. At first this daily theft startled
and amazed me. Then I grew to look forward to the daily
seizure and the verbal interaction which followed.
Window time came next. It followed banana time as a
regular consequence of Ike's castigation by the indignant
Sammy. After "taking" repeated references to himself as a
person badly lacking in morality and character, Ike would
"finally" retaliate by opening the window which faced Sam-
my's machine, to let the "cold air" blow in on Sammy. The
slandering which would, in its echolalic repetition, wear down
Ike's patience and forbearance usually took the form of the
invidious comparison: "George is a good daddy! Ike is a bad
man! A very bad man!" Opening the window would take a
little time to accomplish and would involve a great deal of
verbal interplay between Ike and Sammy, both before and
after the event. Ike would threaten, make feints toward the
window, then finally open it. Sammy would protest, argue,
and make claims that the air blowing in on him would give
him a cold; he would eventually have to leave his machine to
close the window. Sometimes the weather was slightly chilly,
and the draft from the window unpleasant; but cool or hot,
windv or still window time arrived each day. (I assume that
it w;s a cold season development.) George's part
in this interplay, in spite of the "good daddy" laudations, was
to encourage Ike in his window work. He would stress the
tonic values of fresh air and chide Sammy for his unappre-
cia tiveness.
Following window time came lunch time, a formally desig-
nated half-hour for the midday repast and rest break. At this
time, informal interaction would feature exchanges between
Ike and George. The former would start eating his lunch a
few minutes before noon, and the latter, in his role as straw
boss, would censure him for malobservance of the rules. Ike's
off-beat luncheon usually involved a previous tampering with
George's alarm clock. Ike would set the clock ahead a few
minutes in order to maintain his eating schedule without
detection, and George would discover these small daylight
saving changes.
The first "time" interruption of the day I did not share.
It occurred soon after I arrived on the job, at eight o'clock.
George and Ike would share a small pot of coffee brewed on
George's hot plate.
Pickup time, fish time, and coke time came in the afternoon.
I name it pickup time to represent the official visit of the man
who made daily calls to cart away boxes of clicked materials.
The arrival of the pickup man, a Negro, was always a noisy
one, like the arrival of a daily passenger train in an isolated
small town. Interaction attained a quick peak of intensity to
crowd into a few minutes all communications, necessary and
otherwise. Exchanges invariably included loud depreciations
by the pickup man of the amount of work accomplished in
the clicking department during the preceding twenty-four
hours. Such scoffing would be on the order of "Is that all
you've got done? What do you boys do all day?" These
devaluations would be countered with allusions to the "soft
job" enjoyed by the pickup man. During the course of the
exchanges news items would be dropped, some of serious im-
port, such as reports of accomplished or impending layoffs in
the various plants of the company, or of gains or losses in
orders for company products. JVlost of the news items, how-
ever, involved bits of information on plant employees told in
a light vein. Information relayed by the clicker operators was
usually told about each other, mainly in the form of sum-
maries of the most recent kidding sequences. Some of this
material was repetitive, carried over from day to day. Sammy
would be the butt of most of this newscasting, although he
would make occasional counter-reports on Ike and George.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION 163
An invariable part of the interactional content of pickup
time was Ike's introduction of the pickup man to George.
"lVleet Mr. Papeatis I" Ike would say in mock solemnity and
dignity. Each day the pickup man "met" l\,1r. Papeatis, to the
obvious irritation of the latter. Another pickup time invariably
would bring Baby (or Mable) into the interaction. George
would always issue the loud warning to the pickup man:
"N ow I want you to stay away from Baby! She's Henry's
girl!" Henry was a burly Negro with a booming bass voice
who made infrequent trips to the clicking room with lift-
truck loads of materials. He was reputedly quite a ladies' man
among the colored population of the factory. George's warn-
ing to "Stay away from Baby!" was issued to every Negro
who entered the shop. Baby's only part in this was to laugh
at the horseplay.
About mid-afternoon came fish time. George and Ike
would stop work for a few minutes to consume some sort of
pickled fish which Ike provided. Neither Sammy nor I partook
of this nourishment, nor were we invited. For this omission I
was grateful; the fish, brought in a newspaper and with head
and tail intact, produced a reverse effect on my appetite.
George and Ike seemed to share a great liking for fish. Each
Friday night, as a regular ritual, they would enjoy a fish
dinner together at a nearby restaurant. On these nights Ike
would work until 8 :30 and leave the plant with George.
Coke time came late in the afternoon, and was an occasion
for total participation. The four of us took turns in buying
the drinks and in making the trip for them to a fourth floor
vending machine. Through George's manipulation of the
situation, it eventually became my daily chore to go after the
cokes; the straw boss had noted that I made a much faster
trip to the fourth floor and back than Sammy or Ike.
Sammy left the plant at 5 :30, and Ike ordinarily retired
from the scene an hour and a half later. These quitting times
were not marked by any distinctive interaction save the one
regular exchange between Sammy and George over the
former's "early washup." Sammy's tendency was to crowd his
washing up toward five o'clock, and it was George's concern
to keep it from further creeping advance. After Ike's departure
came Boo's arrival. Boo's was a striking personality productive
of a change in topics of conversation to fill in the last hour
of the long workday.
Themes
To put flesh, so to speak, on this interactional frame of
"times," my work group had developed various "themes" of
verbal interplay which had become standardized in their
repetition. These topics of conversation ranged in quality from
an extreme of nonsensical chatter to another extreme of serious
discourse. Unlike the times, these themes flowed one in to the
other in no particular sequence of predictability. Serious con-
versation could suddenly melt into horseplay, and vice versa.
In the middle of a serious discussion on the high cost of living,
Ike might drop a weight behind the easily startled Sammy,
or hit him over the head with a dusty paper sack. Interaction
would immediately drop to a low comedy exchange of slaps,
threats, guffaws, and disapprobations which would invariably
include a ten-minute echolalia of "Ike is a bad man, a very
bad man! George is a good daddy, a very fine man!" Or, on
the other hand, a stream of such invidious comparisons as
followed a surreptitious switching-off of Sammy's machine by
the playful Ike might merge suddenly into a discussion of
the pros and cons of saving for one's funeral.
"Kidding themes" were usually started by George or Ike,
and Sammy was usually the butt of the joke. Sometimes Ike
would have to "take it," seldom George. One favorite kidding
theme involved Sammy's alleged receipt of $100 a month from
his son. The points stressed were that Sammy did not have to
work long hours, or did not have to work at all, because he
had a son to support him. George would always point out that
he sent money to his daughter; she did not send money to him.
Sammy received occasional calls from his wife, and his claim
that these calls were requests to shop for groceries on the
way home were greeted with feigned disbelief. Sammy was
ribbed for being closely watched, bossed, and henpecked by
his wife, and the expression "Are you man or mouse?" became
an echolalic utterance, used both in and out of the original
context.
Ike, who shared his machine and the work scheduled for
it with Boo, the night operator, came in for constant invidious
comparison on the subject of output. The socially isolated
Boo, who chose work rather than sleep on his lonely night
shift, kept up a high level of performance, and George never
tired of pointing this out to Ike. I t so happened that Boo, an
Arabian :Moslem from Palestine, had no use for Jews in
general; and Ike, who was Jewish, had no use for Boo in
particular. ,Vhenever George would extol Boo's previous
night's production, Ike would try to turn the conversation
into a general discussion on the need for educating the Arabs.
George, never permitting the development of serious discus-
sion on this topic, would repeat a smirking warning, "You
watch out for Boo! He's got a long knife!"
The "poom poom" theme was one that caused no sting.
It would come up several times a day to be enjoyed as un-
barbed fun by the three older clicker operators. Ike was
usually the one to raise the question, "How many times you
go po om poom last night?" The person questioned usualli'
replied with claims of being "too old for poom poom." If this
theme did develop a goat, it was 1. When it was pointed out
that I was a younger man, this provided further grist for the
poom poom mill. I soon grew weary of this poom poom busi-
ness, so dear to the hearts of the three old satyrs, and, knowing
where the conversation would inevitably lead, winced when-
ever Ike brought up the subject.
I grew almost as sick of a kidding theme which developed
from some personal information contributed during a serious
conversation on property ownership and high taxes. I dropped
a few remarks about two acres of land which I owned in
one of the western states, and from then on I had to listen
to questions, advice, and general nonsensical comment in re-
gard to "Danelly's farm."lO This "farm" soon became stocked
with horses, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, and the various and
sundry domesticated beasts so tunefully listed in "Old Mc-
Donald Had a Farm." George was a persistent offender with
10. This spelling is the closest I can come to the appellation given
me in George's broken English and adopted by other members or
the group.
164 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
this theme. Where the others seemed to be mainly interested
in statistics on livestock, crops, etc., George's teasing centered
on a generous offering to help with the household chores while
I worked in the fields. He would drone on, ad nauseam, "when
I come to visit you, you will never have to worry about the
housework, Danelly. I'll stay around the house when you go
out to dig the potatoes and milk the cows, I'll stay in and peel
potatoes and help your wife do the dishes." Danelly always
found it difficult to change the subject on George, once the
latter started to bear down on the farm theme.
Another kidding theme which developed out of serious dis-
cussion could be labelled "helping Danelly find a cheaper
apartment." It became known to the group that Danelly had
a pending housing problem, that he would need new quarters
for his family when the permanent resident of his temporary
summer dwelling returned from a vacation. This information
engendered at first a great deal of sympathetic concern and,
of course, advice on apartment hunting. Development into a
kidding theme was immediately related to previous exchanges
between Ike and George on the quality of their respective
dwelling areas. Ike lived in "Lawndale," and George dwelt
in the "Woodlawn" area. The new pattern featured the read-
ing aloud of bogus "apartment for rent" ads in newspapers
which were brought into the shop. Studying his paper at
lunchtime, George would call out, "Here's an apartment for
you, Danelly! Five rooms, stove heat, $20 a month, Lawn-
dale Avenue!" Later, Ike would read from his paper, "Here's
one! Six rooms, stove heat, dirt floor. $18.50 a month! At
55th and Woodlawn." Bantering would then go on in regard
to the quality of housing or population in the two areas. The
search for an apartment for Danelly was not successful.
Serious themes included the relating of major misfortunes
suffered in the past by group members. George referred again
and again to the loss, by fire, of his business establishment.
Ike's chief complaints centered around a chronically ill wife
who had undergone various operations and periods of hospital
care. Ike spoke with discouragement of the expenses attendant
upon hiring a housekeeper for himself and his children; he
referred with disappointment and disgust to a teen-age son, an
inept lad who "couldn't even fix his own lunch. He couldn't
even make himself a sandwich!" Sammy's reminiscences cen-
tered on the loss of a flourishing business when he had to flee
Europe ahead of Nazi invasion.
But all serious topics were not tales of woe. One favorite
serious theme which was optimistic in tone could be called
either "Danelly's future" or "getting Danelly a better job."
It was known that I had been attending "college," the magic
door to opportunity, although my specific course of study re-
mained somewhat obscure. Suggestions poured forth on good
lines of work to get into, and these suggestions were backed
with accounts of friends, and friends of friends, who had made
good via the academic route. 1\IIy answer to the expected ques-
tion, "Why are you working here?" always stressed the "lots
of overtime" feature, and this explanation seemed to suffice
for short-range goals.
There was one theme of especially solemn import, the "pro-
fessor theme." This theme might also be termed "George's
daughter's marriage theme"; for the recent marriage of
George's only child was inextricably bound up with George's
connection with higher learning. The daughter had married
the son of a professor who instructed in one of the local col-
leges. This professor theme was not in the strictest sense a
conversation piece; when the subject came up, George did all
the talking. The two Jewish operatives remained silent as
they listened with deep respect, if not actual awe, to George's
accoun ts of the Big Wedding which, including the wedding
pictures, entailed an expense of $1,000. It was monologue,
but there was listening, there was communication, the sacred
communication of a temple, when George told of going for
Sunday afternoon walks on the Midway with the professor,
or of joining the professor for a Sunday dinner. Whenever he
spoke of the professor, his daughter, the wedding, or even
of the new son-in-law, who remained for the most part in the
background, a sort of incidental like the wedding cake, George
was complete master of the interaction. His manner, in speak-
ing to the rank-and-file of clicker operators, was indeed that
of master deigning to notice his underlings. I came to the
conclusion that it was the professor connection, not the straw-
boss-ship or the extra nickel an hour, which provided the fount
of George's superior status in the group.
If the professor theme may be regarded as the cream of
verbal interaction, the "chatter themes" should be classed as
the dregs. The chatter themes were hardly themes at all;
perhaps they should be labelled "verbal states," or "oral
autisms." Some were of doubtful status as communication;
they were like the howl or cry of an animal responding to its
own physiological state. They were exclamations, ejaculations,
snatches of song or doggerel, talkings-to-oneself, mutterings.
Their classification as themes would rest on their repetitive
character. They were echolalic utterances, repeated over and
over. An already mentioned example would be Sammy's repe-
tition of "George is a good daddy, a very fine man! Ike is a
bad man, a very bad man!" Also, Sammy's repetition of
"Don't bother me! Can't you see I'm busy? I'm a very busy
man!" for ten minutes after Ike had dropped a weight behind
him would fit the classification. Ike would shout "Mamariba!"
at intervals between repetition of bits of verse, such as:
Mama on the bed,
Papa on the floor,
Baby in the crib
Says giver some more!
Sometimes the three operators would pick up one of these
simple chatterings in a sort of chorus. "Are you man or
mouse? I ask you, are you man or mouse?" was a favorite of
this type.
So initial discouragement with the meagerness of social
interaction I now recognized as due to lack of observation.
The interaction was there, in constant flow. It captured at-
tention and held interest to make the long day pass. The
twelve hours of "click, ---move die, click, ---
move die" became as easy to endure as eight hours of varied
activity in the oil fields or eight hours of playing the piece-
work game in a machine shop. The "beast of boredom" was
gentled to the harmlessness of a kitten.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION 165
Black Friday: Disintegration of the Group
But all this was before "Black Friday." Events of that dark
day shattered the edifice of interaction, its framework of times
and mosaic of themes, and reduced the work situation to a
state of social atomization and machine-tending drudgery.
The explosive element was introduced deliberately, but with-
out prevision of its consequences.
On Black Friday, Sammy was not present; he was on
vacation. There was no peach time that morning, of course,
and no banana time. But George and Ike held their coffee
time, as usual, and a steady flow of themes was filling the
morning quite adequately. It seemed like a normal day in the
making, at least one which was going to meet the somewhat
reduced expectations created by Sammy's absence.
Suddenly I was possessed of an inspiration for modification
of the professor theme. When the idea struck, I was working
at Sammy's machine, clicking out leather parts for billfolds.
It was not difficult to get the attention of close neighbor Ike
to suggest satta voce, "Why don't you tell him you saw the
professor teaching in a barber college on lVladison Street? ...
:Make it near Halsted Street."
Ike thought this one over for a few minutes, and caught
the vision of its possibilities. After an interval of steady appli-
cation to his clicking, he informed the unsuspecting George
of his near West Side discovery; he had seen the professor
busy at his instructing in a barber college in the lower reaches
of Hobohemia.
George reacted to this announcement with stony silence.
The burden of questioning Ike for further details on his dis-
covery fell upon me. Ike had not elaborated his story very
much before we realized that the show was not going over.
George kept getting redder in the face, and more tight-lipped;
he slammed into his clicking with increased vigor. I made one
last weak attempt to keep the play on the road by remarking
that barber colleges paid pretty well. George turned to hiss
at me, "You'll have to go to Kankakee with Ike I" I dropped
the subject. Ike whispered to me, "George is sore!"
George was indeed sore. He didn't say another word the
rest of the morning. There was no conversation at lunchtime,
nor was there any after lunch. A pall of silence had fallen over
the clicker room. Fish time fell a casualty. George did not
touch the coke I brought for him. A very long, very dreary
afternoon dragged on. Finally, after Ike left for home, George
broke the silence to reveal his feelings to me:
Ike acts like a five-year-old, not a man! He doesn't
even have the respect of the niggers. But he's got to act
like a man around here I He's always fooling around! I'm
going to stop that! I'm going to show him his place!
... Jews will ruin you, if you let them. I don't care if
he sings, but the first time he mentions my name, I'm
going to shut him up! It's always "lVleet Mr. Papeatis!
George is a good daddy!" And all that. He's paid to
work I If he doesn't work, I'm going to tell Joe! [The
superintendent.]
Then came a succession of dismal workdays devoid of times
and barren of themes. Ike did not sing, nor did he recite
bawdy verse. The shop songbird was caught in the grip of
icy winter. What meager communication there was took a
sequence of patterns which proved interesting only in retro-
spect.
For three days, George would not speak to Ike. Ike made
several weak attempts to break the wall of silence which
George had put between them, but George did not respond;
it was as if he did not hear. George would speak to me, on
infrequent occasions, and so would Ike. They did not speak
to each other.
On the third day George advised me of his new communi-
cation policy, designed for dealing with Ike, and for Sammy,
too, when the latter returned to work. Interaction was now
on a "strictly business" basis, with emphasis to be placed on
raising the level of shop output. The effect of this new policy
on production remained indeterminate. Before the fourth day
had ended, George got carried away by his narrowed interests
to the point of making sarcastic remarks about the poor work
performances of the absent Sammy. Although addressed to
me, these caustic depreciations were obviously for the benefit
of Ike. Later in the day Ike spoke to me, for George's benefit,
of Sammy's outstanding ability to turn out billfold parts.
For the next four days, the prevailing silence of the shop was
occasionally broken by either harsh criticism or fulsome praise
of Sammy's outstanding workmanship. I did not risk replying
to either impeachment or panegyric for fear of involvement
in further situational deteriorations.
Twelve-hour days were creeping again at snail's pace. The
strictly business communications were of no help, and the
sporadic bursts of distaste or enthusiasm for Sammy's clicking
ability helped very little. With the return of boredom, came
a return of fatigue. 1\1y legs tired as the afternoons dragged
on, and I became engaged in conscious efforts to rest one by
shifting my weight to the other. I would pause in my work
to stare through the barred windows at the grimy brick wall
across the alley; and, turning my head, I would notice that
Ike was staring at the wall too. George would do very little
work after Ike left the shop at night. He would sit in a chair
and complain of weariness and sore feet.
In desperation, I fell back on my game of work, my blues
and greens and whites, my ovals and trapezoids, and my scrap-
ing the block. I came to surpass Boo, the energetic night
worker, in volume of output. George referred to me as a "day
Boo" (day-shift Boo) and suggested that I "keep" Sammy's
machine. I managed to avoid this promotion, and consequent
estrangement with Sammy, by pleading attachment to my
own machine.
When Sammy returned to work, discovery of the cleavage
between George and Ike left him stunned. "They were the
best of friends!" he said to me in bewilderment.
George now offered Sammy direct, savage criticisms of his
work. For several days the good-natured Sammy endured
these verbal aggressions without losing his temper; but when
George shouted at him "You work like a preacher!" Sammy
became very angry, indeed. I had a few anxious moments
when I thought that the two old friends were going to come
to blows.
Then, thirteen days after Black Friday, came an abrupt
change in the pattern of interaction. George and Ike spoke to
each other again, in friendly conversation:
166 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
I noticed Ike talking to George after lunch. The two
had newspapers of fish at George's cabinet. Ike was ex-
cited; he said, "I'll pull up a chair!" The two ate for ten
minutes .... It seems that they went up to the 22nd
Street Exchange together during lunch period to cash
pay checks.
That afternoon Ike and Sammy started to play again, and
Ike burst once more into song. Old themes reappeared as
suddenly as the desert flowers in spring. At first, George man-
aged to maintain some show of the dignity of superordination.
\Vhen Ike started to sing snatches of "You Are My Sun-
shine," George suggested that he get "more production."
Then Ike backed up George in pressuring Sammy for more
production. Sammy turned this exhortation into low comedy
by calling Ike a "slave driver" and by shouting over and over
again, "Don't bother me! I'm a busy man!" On one occasion,
as if almost overcome with joy and excitement, Sammy cried
out, "Don't bother me! I'll tell Rothman! [the company
president] I'll tell the union! Don't mention my name! I
hate you!"
I knew that George was definitely back into the spirit of
the thing when he called to Sammy, "Are you man or mouse ?"
He kept up the "man or mouse" chatter for some time.
George was for a time reluctant to accept fruit when it
was offered to him, and he did not make a final capitulation
to coke time until five days after renewal of the fun and
fooling. Strictly speaking, there never was a return to banana
time, peach time, or window time. However, the sharing and
snitching of fruit did go on once more, and the window in
front of Sammy's machine played a more prominent part than
ever in the renaissance of horseplay in the clicker room. In
fact, the "rush to the window" became an integral part of
increasingly complex themes and repeated sequences of inter-
action. This window rushing became especially bound up with
new developments which featured what may be termed the
"anal gesture."ll Introduced by Ike, and given backing by
an enthusiastic, very playful George, the anal gesture became
a key component of fun and fooling during the remaining
weeks of my stay in the shop:
Ike broke wind, and put his head in his hand on the
block as Sammy grabbed a rod and made a mock rush to
open the window. He beat Ike on the head, and George
threw some water on him, playfully. In came the Negro
head of the Leather Department; he remarked jokingly
that we should take out the machines and make a play-
room out of the shop.
Of course, George's demand for greater production was
metamorphized into horseplay. His shout of "Production
please!" became a chatter theme to accompany the varied
antics of Ike and Sammy.
11. I have been puzzled to note widespread appreciation of this
gesture in the "consumatory" communication of the working men of
this nation. For the present I leave it to clinical psychologists to ac-
count for the nature and pervasiveness of this social bond and con-
fine myself to joining offended readers in the hope that someday our
industrial workers will achieve such a level of refinement in thought
and action that their behavior will be no more distressing to us
than that of the college students who fill out our questionnaires Or
form groups for laboratory experimentation.
The professor theme was dropped completely. George never
again mentioned his Sunday walks on the Midway with the
professor.
Conclusions
Speculative assessment of the possible significance of my
observations on information interaction in the clicking room
may be set forth in a series of general statements.
Practical Application
First, in regard to possible practical application to problems
of industrial management, these observations seem to support
the generally accepted notion that one key source of job
satisfaction lies in the informal interaction shared by mem-
bers of a work group. In the clicking-room situation the spon-
taneous development of a patterned combination of horseplay,
serious conversation, and frequent sharing of food and drink
reduced the monotony of simple, repetitive operations to the
point where a regular schedule of long 'work days became
livable. This kind of group interplay may be termed "con-
sumatory" in the sense indicated by Dewey, when he makes
a basic distinction between "instrumental" and "consumatory"
communication.1
2
The enjoyment of communication "for its
own sake" as "mere sociabilities," as "free, aimless social in-
tercourse," brings job satisfaction, at least job endurance, to
work si tuations largely bereft of creative experience.
In regard to another managerial concern, employee pro-
ductivity, any appraisal of the influence of group interaction
upon clicking-room output could be no more than roughly
impressionistic. I obtained no evidence to 'warrant a claim that
banana time, or any of its accompaniments in consumatory
interaction, boosted production. To the contrary, my diary
recordings express an occasional perplexity in the form of
"How does this company manage to stay in business?" How-
ever, I did not obtain sufficient evidence to indicate that, under
the prevailing conditions of laissez-faire management, the
output of our group would have been more impressive if the
playful cavorting of three middle-aged gentlemen about the
barred windows had never been. As far as achievement of
managerial goals is concerned, the most that could be sug-
gested is that leavening the deadly boredom of individualized
work routines with a concurrent flow of group festivities had
a negative effect on turnover. I left the group, with sad
reluctance, under the pressure of strong urgings to accept a
research fellowship which would involve no factory toil. My
fellow clickers stayed with their machines to carryon their
labors in the spirit of banana time.
Theoretical Considerations
Secondly, possible contribution to ongoing sociological in-
quiry into the behavior of small groups, in general, and
factory work groups, in particular, may lie in one or more of
the following ideational products of my clicking-room ex-
perience:
12. John Dewey, Experience and Nature, Open Court Publishing
Co., Chicago, 1925, pp. 202-206.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION 167
1) In their day-long confinement together in a small room
spatially and socially isolated from other work areas of the
factory the Clicking Department employees found themselves
ecologically situated for development of a "natural" group.
Such a development did take place; from worker inter-com-
munications did emerge the full-blown sociocultural system of
consumatory interactions which I came to share, observe, and
record in the process of my socialization.
2) These interactions had a content which could be ab-
stracted from the total existential flow of observable doings
and sayings for labelling and objective consideration. That is,
they represented a distinctive sub-culture, with its recurring
patterns of reciprocal influencings 'which I have described as
times and themes.
3) From these interactions may also be abstracted a social
structure of statuses and roles. This structure may be dis-
cerned in the carrying out of the various informal activities
which provide the content of the sub-culture of the group.
The times and themes were performed with a system of roles
which formed a sort of pecking hierarchy. Horseplay had its
initiators and its victims, its amplifiers and its chorus; kidding
had its attackers and attacked, its least attacked and its most
attacked, its ready acceptors of attack and its strong resistors
to attack. The fun went on with the participation of all, but
within the controlling frame of status, a matter of who can
say or do what to whom and get away with it.
4) In both the cultural content and the social structure of
clicker group interaction could be seen the permeation of
influences which flowed from the various multiple group
memberships of the participants. Past and present "other-
group" experiences or anticipated "outside" social connections
provided significant materials for the building of themes and
for the establishment and maintenance of status and role rela-
tionships. The impact of reference group affiliations on click-
ing-room interaction was notably revealed in the sacred,
status-conferring expression of the professor theme. This im-
pact was brought into very sharp focus in developments which
followed my attempt to degrade the topic, and correlatively,
to demote George.
5) S tab iIi ty of the clicking-room social system was never
threatened by immediate outside pressures. Ours was not an
instrumental group, subject to disintegration in a losing
struggle against environmental obstacles or oppositions. It
was not striving for corporate goals; nor was it faced with
the enmity of other groups. It was strictly a consumatory
group, devoted to the maintenance of patterns of self-enter-
tainment. Under existing conditions, disruption of unity could
come only from within.
Potentials for breakdown were endemic in the interpersonal
interactions involved in conducting the group's activities.
Patterns of fun and fooling had developed within a matrix
of frustration. Tensions born of long hours of relatively
meaningless work were released in the mock aggressions of
horseplay. In the recurrent attack, defense, and counter-
attack there continually lurked the possibility that words or
gestures harmless in conscious intent might cross the subtle
boundary of accepted, playful aggression to be perceived as
real assault. While such an occurrence might incur dis-
pleasure no more lasting than necessary for the quick clari-
fication or creation of kidding norms, it might also spark a
charge of hostility sufficient to disorganize the group.
A contributory potential for breakdown from within lay
in the dissimilar "other group" experiences of the operators.
These other-group affiliations and identifications could provide
differences in tastes and sensitivities, including appreciation
of humor, differences which could make maintenance of con-
sensus in regard to kidding norms a hazardous process of trial
and error adjustments.
6) The risk involved in this trial and error determination
of consensus on fun and fooling in a touchy situation of
frustration-mock aggression-was made evident when I at-
tempted to introduce alterations in the professor theme. The
group disintegrated, instanter. That is, there was an abrupt
cessation of the interactions which constituted our groupness.
Although both George and I were solidly linked in other-
group affiliations with the higher learning, there was not
enough agreement in our attitudes toward university profes-
sors to prevent the interactional development which shattered
our factory play group. George perceived my offered altera-
tions as a real attack, and he responded with strong hostility
directed against Ike, the perceived assailant, and Sammy, a
fellow traveler.
wIy innovations, if accepted, would have lowered the tone
of the sacred professor theme, if not to "Stay Away From
Baby" ribaldry, then at least to the verbal slapstick level of
"finding Danelly an apartment." Such a downgrading of
George's reference group would, in turn, have downgraded
George. His status in the shop group hinged largely upon his
claimed relations with the professor.
7) Integration of our group was fully restored after a series
of changes in the patterning and quality of clicking-room
interaction. It might be said that reintegration took place in
these changes, that the series was a progressive one of step-
by-step improvement in relations, that re-equilibration was in
process during the three weeks that passed between initial
communication collapse and complete return to "normal"
in teraction.
The cycle of loss and recovery of equilibrium may be
crudely charted according to the following sequence of phases:
a) the stony silence of "not speaking"; b) the confining of
communication to formal matters connected with work rou-
tines; c) the return of informal give-and-take in the form of
harshly sarcastic kidding, mainly on the subject of work per-
formance, addressed to a neutral go-between for the "benefit"
of the object of aggression; d) highly emotional direct attack,
and counter-attack, in the form of criticism and defense of
work performance; e) a sudden rapprochement expressed in
serious, dignified, but friendly conversation; f) return to in-
formal interaction in the form of mutually enjoyed mock
aggression; g) return to informal interaction in the form of
regular patterns of sharing food and drink.
The group had disintegrated when George withdrew from
participation; and, since the rest of us were at all times ready
for rapprochement, reintegration was dependent upon his
"return." Therefore, each change of phase in interaction on
the road to recovery could be said to represent an increment
of return on George's part. Or, conversely, each phase could
168 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
represent an increment of reacceptance of punished deviants.
Perhaps more generally applicable to description of a variety
of reunion situations would be conceptualization of the phase
changes as increments of reassociation without an atomistic
differentiation of the "movements" of individuals.
8) To point out that George played a key role in this par-
ticular case of re-equilibration is not to suggest that the
homeostatic controls of a social system may be located in a
type of role or in a patterning of role relationships. Such
controls could be but partially described in terms of human
interaction; they would be functional to the total configura-
tion of conditions within the field of influence. The automatic
controls of a mechanical system operate as such only under
certain achieved and controlled conditions. The human body
recovers from disease when conditions for such homeostasis are
"right." The clicking-room group regained equilibrium under
certain undetermined conditions. One of a number of other
possible outcomes could have developed had conditions not
been favorable for recovery.
For purposes of illustration, and from reflection on the
case, I would consider the following as possibly necessary
conditions for reintegration of our group: a) Continued
monotony of work operations; b) Continued lack of a com-
paratively adequate substitute for the fun and fooling release
from work tensions; c) Inability of the operatives to escape
from the work situation or from each other, within the work
situation. George could not fire Ike or Sammy to remove them
from his presence, and it would have been difficult for the
three middle-aged men to find other jobs if they were to quit
the shop. Shop space was small, and the machines close to-
gether. Like a submarine crew, they had to "live together";
d) Lack of conflicting definitions of the situation after Ike's
perception of George's reaction to the "barber college" attack.
George's anger and his punishment of the offenders was per-
ceived as justified; e) Lack of introduction of new issues or
causes which might have carried justification for new attacks
and counter-attacks, thus leading interaction into a spiral of
conflict and crystallization of conflict norms. For instance,
had George reported his offenders to the superintendent for
their poor work performance; had he, in his anger, committed
some offense which would have led to reporting of a grievance
to local union officials; had he made his anti-Semitic remarks
in the presence of Ike or Sammy, or had I relayed these
remarks to them; had I tried to "take over" Sammy's machine,
as George had urged; then the interactional outcome might
have been permanent disintegration of the group.
9) Whether or not the particular patterning of interaction-
al change previously noted is somehow typical of a "re-
equilibration process" is not a major question here. My pur-
pose in discriminating the seven changes is primarily to sug-
gest that re-equilibration, when it does occur, may be described
in observable phases and that the emergence of each succeeding
phase should be dependent upon the configuration of condi-
tions of the preceding one. Alternative eventual outcomes may
change in their probabilities, as the phases succeed each other,
just as prognosis for recovery in sickness may change as the
disease situation changes.
10) Finally, discrimination of phase changes in social pro-
cess may have practical as well as scientific value. Trained and
skillful administrators might follow the practice in medicine
of introducing aids to re-equilibration when diagnosis shows
that they are needed.