Essay 1. DRAFT

Status is essentially ones' way of showing they exist. For the past few centuries, status has been based
on how much one possesses (money, education, character and so on.) In texts Working by Studs 
Terkel, segment Who Built the Pyramids and in They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, 
and Russel Durst; segment Blue Collar Brilliance, all authors seem to come to a conclusion as to
what has given one status through out history and what still does.

In Who Built the Pyramids, author Terkel, interviewed a steel working/ laborer by the name of
Mike Lefevre. Lefevre is a hard working family man, who happens to hate his job for one particular
reason, status. Lefevre believes that status should be based on the things one does, no matter if they
seem minor in society. For example, at some point in time, one "could point to a house he built, how
many logs he stacked. He built it and he was proud of it. I don't really think I could be proud if a
contractor built a home for me..." because Lefevre himself did not put his sweat, time, and dedication
to build this own house, he feels as if he could not take credit of someone else's handy work; something that was and is still done. Lefevre, as a steel worker, handles steel all day, but he never gets to see the
ending product of it. He never gets too see where the steel he picked up all day goes to, and what does
it become part of; "I worked for a trucker one time. And I got to this tiny satisfaction when I loaded the
truck. At least I could see the truck depart loaded. In steel mill forget it. you don't see where nothing
goes." The CEO of a world wide store is given credit/status for such a great product that his company
produced, but do you really think the CEO woke up in the morning with the intentions to go to a
factory and with his hands, produce 300 million copies of xx product? No, he hired workers to do that
for him. So is the product really something the CEO came up with or the workers? The CEO has
workers who are "mass-producing things" but he/she never gets to see the ending result of it. The
workers do. Another example is a building owner, yes he/she put funds for the building to be built, but
he/she themselves did not do it, so why is it that the owner receives all the credit? "I would like to see a
building, say, the Empire State, I would like to see on on one side of it a foot-wide strip from top to
bottom with the name of every bricklayer, the name of every electrician, with all the names . So when a
guy walked by, he could take his son and say, "See, thats me over there on the forty-fifth floor. I put the
steel beam in." Picasso can point to a painting. A writer can point to a book. Everyone should have
something to point to."