Down the Up Escalator by Barbara Garson Page A

implemented in other Big Box distribution centers. “They’re already getting it done with less people at lower cost,” Chuck said. “So now the pressure is on us to get up there.”
    Along with new quotas the company had instituted a change from a five-day week to a ten-hour-a-day, four-day week.
    “Four tens means management’s got to be there 2:30 in the afternoon,” Chuck explained. “And we don’t get off till about 3:30 in the morning.”
    “That’s over twelve hours!” I said.
    “Right. Management does thirteen hours for the ten-hour shift. If the shift goes overtime, we’re there till five o’clock in the morning. And if they work on Friday, then it’s not a four-day week; it’s a five-day week. And you’ve already worked fifty-two hours. So it’s now sixty hours. So you’ve given them another half week’s work.” Managers don’t receive overtime pay.
    Americans work longer hours than people in any other industrial country. We average 20 percent more, for instance, than French or German workers. That amounts to an extra day a week. Not only have Americans been working longer hours since the mid-1970s, but American families have been sending more members out to work. Michael’s mother worked full-time as long as he could remember. Chuck says that in the families he knows at church, both spouses work “except if there’s a problem like unemployment or illness.”
    If families are working so many more hours than in the past, why do they borrow so much? I didn’t want to sound as if I were accusing the Kennys of extravagance or poor management. Nor did I want to put my own theories into his mouth. So I broached the subject of debt in as open-ended a manner as I could.
    “I notice your son doesn’t have a credit card. He almost won’t touch one.”
    “I think Michael has learned from our mistakes,” Mr. Kenny volunteered. “We, like all young families, used credit cards and got into debt.”
    “What kind of debt?” I asked. “What were you buying?”
    “Just normal expenses. We were saying, ‘Why should the two of us be working as hard as we are and not be able to afford a decent car or computers. Maybe we were keeping up with the Joneses. Soyou’d put it on your card. Then something would come up; you couldn’t make the full payment, so you’d carry it over.
    “There was a point in time when we had a lot of medical problems with our daughter and we had college debt with her: we were living paycheck to paycheck; it was getting to where I was having to wire money for a car payment so it wouldn’t be late.
    “At the time we weren’t tithing,” Mr. Kenny explained. “We were giving like 6 percent. And I remember one Sunday morning we were going to a church, and we were sort of having a heated discussion on the way. The kids weren’t with us. I don’t know what they were doing then, maybe just sleeping.
    “My wife said, ‘I think we should be tithing.’ I said, ‘We can hardly make our payments now, and you want to increase our giving?’ She said, ‘Yes.’
    “Well, that Sunday when we wrote the check, she said, ‘What will it be for?’ I figured it out and wrote the check. And we have never been in need of money since then.”
    There was a long pause.
    “I’m not saying money hasn’t been tight. But we have not been living paycheck to paycheck since we decided to give God back a tenth of what he has given us.”
    “Do you remember what year that was?” I asked.
    “It must have been about fifteen years ago because I had heart trouble right after that. They gave me angioplasty.”
    “How long since you’ve been out of debt?” I asked.
    “Sometime in the last five years. Well, we still owe on our house, of course, and one vehicle and the new furniture you’re sitting on.” He gestured to the couch. “But that was interest-free,” he said, hastening to set the record straight.
    “It’s very comfortable,” I said. It must be the new couch Michael instructed