The Company Man By Ellen Goodman

                                                                         The Company Man

by Ellen Goodman(1941)

 

      The CompanyMan is a short text written by Ellen Goodman. She describes a man who "worked himself to death" at fifty -one. She presents the facts about the man's life and work, allowing the readers to draw their conclusion regarding the text even though it reflects the management aspect of Phil.

      Phil is a central figure in this writing. He is depicted as a workaholic, a classic worker who was devoted to his work rather than home affairs. He worked six days for his company. He was fifty years old, was tagged as a perfect Type "A" worker in his company. He worked as a vice president in his office. He was well identified after his death "he worked himself to death, finally and precisely, at 3:00 A.M Sunday."   At the funeral, the sixty-year-old company president told his wife that it would be hard to replace him and the company would miss him. It would be hard to find a hard worker like him for the company. Phil did not care his health for his work. He always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk.

      Helen who is Phil's wife blames her husband for not caring for household activities. She was a woman with good marketing skills. His eldest son was a hard-working executive in a manufacturing firm down south. In the day and a half before the funeral, he went around the neighborhood researching his father, asking the neighbor, what he was like.

      His second child is a girl, who is twenty -four and newly married. She lives near her mother and they are close, but whenever she was alone with her father, in a car driving somewhere, they had nothing to say to each other.

The youngest is twenty, a boy a high school graduate who has odd jobs to stay in grass and food. He was the man who tried to grab his father's path. He had different relations with his father than other members of his family 

 

Comment

Phil seems to be a failure in home management although he is good for his company. He is portrayed as a workaholic man, a hard worker in the company, but he lacks sound relations with family members. His eldest son goes to neighbors to find out what his father was like. His daughter has less talk even though both travel together in a car. His wife expresses a kind of scorn for his managerial failure at home, but a company man  Type "A" worker for  the Company

 Questions: 1. What attitude does Phil's wife have towards him?

                    2. What characteristics of Type A personality does Phill possess?

                    3. Write an essay explaining what it means to be a company man or company woman.