A Job-Seeker's Journal
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union AJOB-SEEKER'S JOURNAL BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS For the past two months I have been actively pursuing a Federal appointment as director of the Farmers Home Administration, an...
...Thanks anyway...
...Your resume," he said, "is strong on writing and editing but weak on administration...
...States of the Union AJOB-SEEKER'S JOURNAL BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS For the past two months I have been actively pursuing a Federal appointment as director of the Farmers Home Administration, an agency of the U.S...
...and a note from a friend inquiring whether there is any truth to the rumor that I have lost my sanity and am seeking a government job All these letters seem based on misapprehension about my status and reputation...
...His application for the $39,000-a-year job hasn't drawn a nibble from the Carterites, but Sen...
...Rather than write Carter a letter," he notes, "Margolis wrote his application as an article in . . . The New Leader, a small, 53-year-old liberal magazine...
...Other items of interest in the morning's mail: A letter from a Midwest senator saying he has endorsed me because I live in his state (I don't...
...And K.'s subsequent struggle to win the job is also familiar...
...There was a call from CBS Radio in New York asking if I wanted to comment, on tape, about the UPI story...
...Friday: Couldn't sleep last night, so I got up, poured myself a nightcap and read a chapter from The Castle...
...As of this writing my candidacy remains "viable," at least according to a friend of a friend who knows a Congressional aide who has talked on the phone with someone who works for Robert Bergland, the new Secretary of Agriculture...
...One of the Congressional aides 1 talked to today gave me a hard time...
...Johnson discovered, choosing one's patron is a gamble...
...You haven't once up to now come into real contact with our authorities . . .") "I can tell you tentatively that you are definitely still being considered," he said...
...Essentially, these notations represent the experience of a stranger in the Land of Oz...
...That's nice to know...
...Has he sent an application to all the candidates, or is he simply betting on me...
...Sooner or later class will tell...
...The number of the big switchboard on the Hill is 224-3121—little digits that take less time to dial...
...In short, he is blindfolded, a condition he probably deserves for trying to pin a tail on the Democratic donkey...
...Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life"—at least in Washington...
...Did it have anything to do with the Russian wheat deal...
...Not a blessed thing...
...Oh...
...Department of Agriculture...
...I asked...
...Thursday: Today it was my turn to do the telephoning, chiefly to senators and representatives...
...A Washington job applicant sees dozens of people —Congressmen, transitional workers, anyone whose title suggests a shred of political influence?but he never knows for certain if he is talking to The Right Person, nor does he have an inkling of who will make The Final Decision...
...As K. tells the Mayor, "I'll enumerate for your benefit a few of the things that keep me here: the sacrifice 1 made...
...From what I've been reading, that's been the fate of quite a few of the administrators I'm trying to follow—C...
...Too bad about that UP...
...See "The Little Agency that Could," NL, January 3.) "Farmers Home," as we experts call it, makes loans to rural residents for housing, agriculture and small-town facilities...
...no doubt the decision on my appointment, whichever way it finally goes, will be similarly misguided...
...In Washington these days, such a source easily passes for "unimpeachable...
...other job-seekers, who may be better acquainted with the Wizard, will have a different story to tell...
...Click...
...that last adjective was not a sneer-word in New Deal days...
...Because power is seldom spelled out, one must proceed on the assumption that everybody has some, including secretaries and receptionists...
...It speaks for itself," I said with admirable caution...
...A naive aspirant may enter the lists like a puppy, leaping and cavorting, but he stays to fight like a bulldog...
...Kafka really knew his bureaucracy...
...That's encouraging...
...They'll see you now as the man to beat—and they'll beat you...
...Karl Marx—unfairly, 1 believe?wrote of the "idiocies of rural life...
...Why too bad...
...Tell me, just what is the Fanners Home Administration...
...you must have heard it too...
...a copy of a laudatory epistle to Bergland written by a political science professor in Pennsylvania, in which he claims that my nomination "might well come to be regarded as one of President Carter's most astute appointments...
...I had an early lunch: calories and solace...
...I could only repeat to him what the humorist Bill Nye once said about Wagner's music: "It's a helluva lot better than it sounds...
...I asked...
...What would you advise...
...Next, a supporter from Minnesota (Bergland's home state, and mine, too) called to say that the Bergland staff member who had granted me an hour-long job interview was no longer working for the Secretary...
...To do otherwise is to court trouble...
...Saturday: In the mail today came an application for a job with Farmers Home from a fellow in Arizona now working for hud...
...When anybody calls up the Castle from here, the instruments of all the subordinate departments ring, or rather they would ring if practically all the departments . . . didn't have their receivers off...
...As an FSA administrator he was tough, patient and idealistic...
...It was definitely Delphic, in a tentative kind of way...
...At first, matters seem to go well for K. From a village telephone he calls "above" to the Castle (one thinks of it as resembling the Ray-burn building), and learns that a land surveyor is indeed expected...
...In the Castle the telephone works beautifully of course...
...There's a feeling here," he went on, "that we want a tough financial man in the job...
...A call just now brings the un verified word that I am one of three candidates still being considered...
...I didn't know it was like that," says K. "I couldn't know of all these peculiarities . . . ." I dropped off to sleep with a humming and singing in my ears...
...Tuesday: Mike Feinsilber, a UPI reporter in Washington, has picked up the story of my candidacy and sent it out on the wire...
...What might he have said about rural politics...
...As the nondrama unfolds, I keep jotting down my impressions in a job-seeker's journal, and I find that they accurately reflect the day-today confusions of the chase...
...If a decision should be reached, I'll send for you...
...All it'll do,' he assured me, "is unify your opposition...
...B. Baldwin, for instance, who in the late '30s and early '40s headed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a progenitor of Farmers Home...
...Baldwin," writes one historian, "spent an enormous amount of time on the telephone and in confidential sessions with individual friends 'on the Hill.' For this, he was sometimes accused of 'private politicking' and a 'conspiratorial approach...
...feature," he said...
...Wednesday: The phone keeps ringing...
...But later the Mayor explains to K. the facts of village life: "You haven't once up to now come into real contact with our authorities...
...But there's no fixed connection with the Castle, no central exchange that transmits our calls farther...
...now that I've stumbled this far I wouldn't mind going the whole distance...
...Every hour in Washington is rush-hour...
...Lee Metcalf, D-Mont., and Reps...
...What was the receptionist's name...
...As Dr...
...Now and then, however, a fatigued official may feel the need of a little distraction . . . and may hang the receiver up...
...Then we get an answer, but an answer of course that's merely a practical joke...
...Donald Fraser, D-Minn., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., told Margolis they've asked the new Administration to take a look...
...I've been told it's being used there all the time . . . We can hear this continual telephoning in our telephones down here as a humming and singing...
...Beanie" Baldwin (his middle name is Benham) was a commoner from Radford, Virginia, the son of a flour miller, who tried to succeed in the electric supply business but went bust in the Depression...
...Recently I heard secondhand that a senator, in endorsing me, had expressed the hope I would be "another Beanie Baldwin...
...The squeaky wheel principle applies here...
...Maybe history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure keeps egging us on...
...dale aid, she had been compelled to wait three hours in his anteroom while the receptionist admitted a succession of late arrivers...
...Its administrator is supposed to preside over the work of some 3,000 employes and the distribution of some $7 billion...
...the long and difficult journey, the well-grounded hopes I built on my engagement here . . ." "I know," the Mayor replies...
...I hope I've been of help to you...
...The other day a fellow job-seeker told me that after finally getting an appointment with a Mon...
...This morning I talked to a man who is reputed to be very close to Bob Bergland...
...I may as well get in practice as a telephone addict...
...The story cheered me, until a world-weary friend called from Washington...
...The ordeal of K., the wretched but gutsy land surveyor who is summoned by the Castle for work, only to be told on arrival that the summons was "a small mistake," reoccurs every day in all the civilized capitals of the world...
...Sir," I was told, "you're being recorded now...
...Apparently the interview was wasted effort, but in this strange business, what isn't...
...So have some farm groups...
...Not much of a record, considering the job you're going after...
...I wouldn't know" was the answer, and perhaps also the problem...
Vol. 60 • February 1977 • No. 5
