I haven’t gotten too far into this month’s bookclub book, Peter Bearman’s Doormen, but already I’m loving it. Mind you, that could be because I’m a sociology buff to begin with, but the book has a remarkable ability to read the macro-level issues of social conflict and integration in the micro-interactions between people.
As a teaser, I thought I’d excerpt some of the structuring contradictions Bearman lists in the opening chapter:
- Getting a job as a doorman is both impossible and too easy. Doormen jobs are so hard to get that most people who apply never get past the door. But doormen never wait for their jobs and perceive that they just stumble into them by chance.
- Most doormen do not feel that they are racists, and are not racist, but in all most all buildings, blacks and other minorities who come to visit are treated quite differently than whites.
- Most doormen are bored much of the time, and more tenants see doormen doing nothing. Yet when tenants need them, the doormen are more often than not busy.
- Doormen say, and many tenants agree, that their main job is security, but few doormen can ever recall doing anything that was security related, except for protecting tenants from the behavior of other tenants.(4-5).
More to say on these, I’m sure, after book club itself. Buried, too, are fun little tidbits, like the fact that over half the trees in New York are behind doors.
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