A & P vs. Bartleby

Herman's Bartleby the Scrivener and John Updike's A & P both portray the relationship between managers and employees differently. For example, it can be seen in A & P that the main character leaves the hard work of telling the girls that they are not appropriately dressed to his manager. This illustrates the way employees within a company care more and more about their jobs the further they move up on the work chain. "Then everybody's luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye." He doesn't care and he's not about to do anything about the girls until the manager comes around. He just enjoys the fact that some girls came in in bikinis. Bartleby the Scrivener portrays more of a relationship of mutual respect (although the employees don't always respect their boss). He is much more involved and keeps an eye out on the group while doing his own work rather than having to step up and do the tough work for them. This is most likely the case because his employees are not 19 year old kids as in A & P. I think this shows the difference between a temporary workplace vs. a workplace for adults who are trying to support themselves.

Bartleby the Scrivener and A & P both involve different kinds of ideas of productivity. Both have laid-back approaches, but they do show differences. Bartleby is laid-back in the way that the workers are most likely there for longer than a temporary period of time and there isn't much of a rush in the profession. "This appeal to my fellow-feeling was hardly to be resisted. At all events, I saw that go he would not. So I made up my mind to let him stay, resolving, nevertheless, to see to it, that during the afternoon he had to do with my less important papers." The manager here instead of getting angry decides to take a creative approach and rearrange the workload. A & P doesn't show much productivity at all, especially from the lower employees. The manager has to actually leave his current task to go tell the girls what the deal is. He doesn't expect the workers, who are both around the age of 19 and most likely don't care much about their job, to do anything beyond what's in the job description. The ideas portrayed of productivity show the different expectations at different kinds of jobs.

Going along with what was said above, the different kinds of work in Bartleby and A & P are valued differently by the individuals involved. For example, as stated before, the boys working in the store in A & P don't seem to value the image of the company much. This is evident in the fact that they don't do anything regarding the situation other than stare at the girls involved. The manager " is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye" and he has to come over and deal with it himself. Had he not been there at that very moment most likely nothing would have been done. Bartleby, on the other hand, shows that the individuals involved in the company value their work and what goes on at the workplace. Nippers and Turkey are quite offended by Bartleby's unwillingness to help out and go out of their way to express this displeasure. Granted, this may have only been the case because his unproductivity was causing them more work, but that's a different story. The values of individuals in each workplace can be seen in who steps up for what when the stories are compared.

(I read both of these stories online so I have no page numbers)