An Overqualified Bookkeeper Answers a $3-a-Week Ad
A desperate job-seeker responds to a measly $3-a-week bookkeeping ad with a resume that includes everything from peanut roasting to dog-ear clipping.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An advertisement in a newspaper calling for 'a first-class bookkeeper at $3 a week' elicited the following answer, the only one attracted by the munificent salary: 'I am a young man, 37 years of age, having had a business experience of 21 years, having been connected with the United States embassy at Paris, and feel confident if you give me a trial I can prove my worth to you. I am not only an expert bookkeeper, professional stenographer and typewriter, excellent operator and erudite college graduate, but have many other accomplishments which might make me desirable. I am an experienced snow shoveler, a first-class peanut roaster, have some knowledge of removing superfluous hair and clipping puppy dog ears, have a medal for reciting 'Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight,' am a skilled chiropodist and practical farmer, can also cook, take care of horses, crease trousers, open oysters and repair umbrellas. Being possessed of great physical beauty, would not only be useful but ornamental as well, lending to the sacred precincts of your office that delightful artistic charm that a fine vase or stuffed billy goat would. As to salary, I would feel I was robbing the widow and stripping the orphan if I were to take advantage of your munificence by accepting the fabulous sum of $3 per week, and I would be entirely willing to give you my services for less, and by accepting $1.37 per week would give you an opportunity of not only increasing your church tithe, pay your butcher and keep up your life insurance, but I am to be found a haven for indigent bill posters, salesmen and endow a free bed in the cats' home.'
“I would feel I was robbing the widow and stripping the orphan if I were to take advantage of your munificence by accepting the fabulous sum of $3 per week.”
This 1899 satirical letter captures a frustration familiar to modern Seattleites: the absurdity of demanding 'first-class' professional experience for wages that barely cover the cost of living. While the applicant uses irony to mock the poverty-level salary, the underlying tension between employer expectations and fair compensation remains a perennial struggle in the city's labor market.
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