Man in the Gray Flannel Suit Read Free Page B

damn right to say that money doesn’t matter.
    There were eighteen elevators in the lobby of the United Broadcasting building. They were all brass colored and looked as though they were made of money. The receptionist in the personnel office was a breathtakingly beautiful girl with money-colored hair–a sort of copper gold. “Yes?” she said.
    “I want to apply for a position in the public-relations department.”
    “If you will sit down in the reception room, I’ll arrange an interview for you,” she said.
    The company had a policy of giving all job applicants an interview. Every year about twenty thousand people, most of them wildly unqualified, applied for jobs there, and it was considered poor public relations to turn them away too abruptly. Beyond the receptionist’s desk was a huge waiting room. A rich wine-red carpet was on the floor, and there were dozens of heavy leather armchairs filledwith people nervously smoking cigarettes. On the walls were enormous colored photographs of the company’s leading radio and television stars. They were all youthful, handsome, and unutterably rich-appearing as they smiled down benignly on the job applicants. Tom picked a chair directly beneath a picture of a big-bosomed blonde. He had to wait only about twenty minutes before the receptionist told him that a Mr. Everett would see him. Mr. Everett’s office was a cubicle with walls of opaque glass brick, only about three times as big as a priest’s confessional. Everett himself was a man about Tom’s age and was also dressed in a gray flannel suit. The uniform of the day, Tom thought. Somebody must have put out an order.
    “I understand that you are interested in a position in the public-relations department,” Everett said.
    “I just want to explore the situation,” Tom replied. “I already have a good position with the Schanenhauser Foundation, but I’m considering a change.”
    It took Everett only about a minute to size Tom up as a “possibility.” He gave him a long printed form to fill out and told him he’d hear from the United Broadcasting Corporation in a few days. Tom spent almost an hour filling out all the pages of the form, which, among other things, required a list of the childhood diseases he had had and the names of countries he had visited. When he had finished, he gave it to the girl with the hair of copper gold and rang for one of the golden elevators to take him down.
    Five days later Tom got a letter from Everett saying an interview had been arranged for him with Mr. Gordon Walker in Room 3672 the following Monday at 11:00 A.M. In the letter Walker was given no title. Tom didn’t know whether he were going to have another routine interview, or whether he were actually being considered for a position. He wondered whether he should tell Dick Haver, the director of the Schanenhauser Foundation, that he was looking for another job. The danger of not telling him was that the broadcasting company might call him for references any time, and Dick wouldn’t be pleased to find that Tom was applying for another job behind his back. It was important to keep Dick’s good will, because the broadcasting company’s decision might depend on the recommendation Dick gave him. In any one of a thousand ways, Dick could damn him, without Tom’s ever learning about it. All Dick would have todo when the broadcasting company telephoned him would be to say, “Tom Rath? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think I’d want to go on record one way or the other on Mr. Rath. He’s a nice person, you understand, an awfully nice person. I’d be perfectly willing to say that!”
    On the other hand, it would be embarrassing to tell Dick he was seeking another job and then be unable to find one. Tom decided to delay seeing Dick until after he had had his next interview.
    Walker’s outer office was impressive. As soon as Tom saw it, he knew he was being seriously considered for a job, and maybe a pretty good one. Walker had