How to Tell When You're Tired: A Brief Examination of Work

There have been untold volumes published on the nature and necessity of work, but almost none of them written by the experts: the workers themselves. Until this book. Reg Theriault, for over thirty years a longshoreman on the San Francisco waterfront, finally gives voice to the thoughts and conditions of the laboring classes from the privileged point of view of a man well used to tough manual labor.

With a humorous sense of balance - and a refreshing absence of working-class cant - he examines the real world of the workplace: the constant struggle for respect and autonomy, the perennial tendency of management to treat workers as merely one part of the production process, the parallel habit of unions to bargain away precisely the wrong things, the nature of bosses, the sheer grinding tedium and danger of moving heavy objects, and the sense of accomplishment gained from doing a piece of work right.