Now their legacy is on display for all to see, at the “Monument of the Unknown Government Employee,” which had its opening earlier this month in the rotunda of the Los Angeles City Hall. It is a modest piece of work, in keeping with the achievements of those it honors. The artist, John Marshall, chose materials such as cardboard tubing that express the concept of “no heavy lifting.” A question mark, laid out in carpet on the floor alongside, conveys the familiar bureaucratic spirit of who, me? The cupola evokes the bombastic classicism of Works Progress Administration architecture–and beneath it, at the focal point of the whole thing, is the object that makes the American way of goofing off the model for the industrialized world: a coffeepot.
Of course, not everyone feels equally honored by this tribute. “I don’t think it makes a very favorable impression on the public,” says Cathy Craven, who checks architects’ plans for the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. “I’m not speaking for everybody, but for the most part we’re a very hardworking group of people.” Some city workers were circulating a petition last week to remove the monument, although it was scheduled to be taken down at the end of November in any case. Marshall, 35, says he was surprised that anyone took offense at his little joke. “I thought it was kind of innocuous,” he said, adding: “You can take it either way–those that are most diligent and encumbered by a huge workload may need all that coffee.”
Is it appropriate to single out public employees in this way? Any thoughtful, fair-minded citizen would answer, gimme a break. This is not because the layabouts in the halls of government are demonstrably lazier than those of the private sector, but because of their ineluctability. You can go to a different bank if the lines are too long, but if an IRS worker keeps you on hold for 20 minutes, what can you do about it? Pay your taxes to someone else? Americans are funny, muses Victor Gotbaum, who led New York City’s powerful public-employee union for many years. We like to say that “government is best that governs least,” but when we actually see a government worker doing less, we get all up in arms.
Gotbaum sees a double standard here. A journalist whose head keeps hitting his keyboard is a problem only to his superiors, but a sanitation worker who takes an extra five minutes in the shower shakes the very foundations of the republic because he’s paid by the taxpayers. Virtually every level of government is under the surveillance of auditors, like New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, whose office reported in 1990 that 92 percent of a sample of city boiler ‘Inspectors spent more than half their workday on personal business. And even these were pikers compared with Charles Miller, a Chicago street sweeper who stole a jewelry salesman’s car two years ago in Fond du Lac, Wis., 150 miles from the Loop and got away with $187,000 in gems while signed in at his job in the Streets and Sanitation Department.
Well, anyone would have to agree that this is carrying a coffee break to extremes. But who would begrudge the hardworking plans inspectors of Los Angeles their modest refreshment? By chance we are in the 40th anniversary year of the coffee break, which according to historian Stan Schultz of the University of Wisconsin was first institutionalized around 1952. (The National Coffee Association reports that Americans averaged .3 cup of coffee per worker per day at the office last year–less than a quarter of what they drank at home.) Together with contractual paid vacations, the daily coffee break contributed to the perception among workers of leisure time as a right rather than a privilege, says Schultz. And in honor of that precious right, let’s all raise a cup to those unheralded, obscure, uncelebrated heroes, of whom it can be said that while others worked to build America, they were content to use it as a place to lean against.
