Mr. Eksteins observes that "soldiers, secretaries, orderlies, menial staff, and other bunker dwellers began to frolic". The rites of spring were again re-enacted.
Automation and lean production meant that increasingly the larger employers needed only a small core of skilled workers, and a wider periphery of menial staff, temporary and casual workers.
Worst part of job: The menial stuff.
That's how unfettered capitalism works, that's how America works.' In the American media coverage of 11 September, there has been relatively little media coverage of one particular demographic: the scores of menial workers - cooks, cleaners, catering staff, many of whom were illegal immigrants on breadline wages - who perished in the attacks on the Twin Towers.
While I'm using law offices as an example, I would encourage other small businesses in different fields to consider how automation of menial tasks could open up their staff to support the business in new ways.
Three days after the inspector general closed the case, the administrator was transferred "to a new low-level position in which all of his responsibilities were replaced with menial tasks, and his contact with key staff and activities was severely limited," the report said.
Their experts are trained to weed out excesses, such as billing for paralegal staff rather than cheaper clerks for menial tasks.There are signs of pushback.
With a shrinking advertising base, Mr. Rattray, a fit 53, has had to pare his staff and take on some of the more menial duties himself: helping with obituaries, letters to the editor (which are published in full, in keeping with a longstanding Star policy), and even the community and government calendars.
Of all the cliches associated with rappers, one with more truth in it than most is their fondness for epic entourages: staff, sidekicks and assorted hangers-on designated a token menial role in the group.
Others had loads of staff but spent the majority of their time on menial tasks such as updating reports.
He got his start at Timely Publications as an assistant in 1939, where he would do menial jobs like refill ink wells and fetch lunch for the staff.
