Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/294

 ods. You will start at five or six dollars a week doing simple, humble tasks; and you will do them just well enough so that your employer or the head of your department will not find fault with you. You will do what you are paid for—and not one jot more. You will not arrive at the store one minute ahead of time, and your eye will be on the clock-dial when the afternoon shadows begin to fall.

Not how much you can do in a day, but how little and still hold your position! Is this to be your gospel? You are not lazy, but soon you will belong to the great army of workers who are afraid of being imposed upon by their employers. You are getting ready to join the legions of underpaid girls and women.

Make no mistake about your abilities when first you are paid wages. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred you will not begin to earn what your employer pays you, I do not care how small the salary. Your blunders will cost him money or customers. Your inexperience and the necessity for showing you how to do things in the firm's way will cost the time and the energy of some well-paid employee placed over you in authority. Your employer will not receive any returns for what he pays you for many, many weeks.

Late one afternoon I receive a letter from an out-of-town friend.