Subject Assignment | Class Companion

from Born Worker

by Gary Soto

Born Worker is about the business venture of a young boy named José and his cousin, Arnie.

“Got an idea,” Arnie said cheerfully. “Something that’ll make us money.”
José looked at his cousin, not a muscle of curiosity twitching in his face.
Still, Arnie explained that since he himself was so clever with words, and his best cousin in the whole world was good at working with his hands, that maybe they might start a company.
“What would you do?” José asked,
“Me?” he said brightly. “Shoot, I’ll round up all kinds of jobs for you. You won’t have to do anything.” He stopped, then started again. “Except—you know—do the work.”
“Get out of here,” José said.
“Don’t be that way,” Arnie begged. “Let me tell you how it works.”
The boys went inside the house, and while José stripped off his school clothes and put on his jeans and a T-shirt, Arnie told him that they could be rich.
“You ever hear of this guy named Bechtel?” Arnie asked.
José shook his head,
“Man, he started just like us,” Arnie said. “He started digging ditches and stuff, and then the next thing you knew, he was sitting by his own swimming pool. You want to sit by your own pool, don’t you?” Arnie smiled, waiting for José to speak up.
“Never heard of this guy Bechtel,” José said after he rolled on two huge socks, worn at the heels….
“Listen, I’ll find the work, and then we can split it fifty-fifty.”
José knew fifty-fifty was a bad deal.
“How about sixty-forty?” Arnie suggested when he could see that José wasn’t going for it. “I know a lot of people from my dad’s job. They’re waiting for us.”
José sat on the edge of the bed and started to lace up his boots. He knew that there were agencies that would find you work, agencies that took a portion of your pay. They’re cheats, he thought, people who sit in air-conditioned offices while others work.
“You really know a lot of people?” José asked.
“Boatloads,” Arnie said. “My dad works with this millionaire—honest—who cooks a steak for his dog every day.” 19. He’s a liar, José thought. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t picture a dog grubbing on steak.
The world was too poor for that kind of silliness.
“Listen, I’ll go eighty-twenty,” José said.

“Aw man,” Arnie whined. “That ain’t fair.”
José laughed.
“I mean, half the work is finding the jobs,” Arnie explained, his palms up as he begged José to be reasonable.
José knew this was true. He had had to go door-to-door, and he disliked asking for work. He assumed that it should automatically be his since he was a good worker, honest, and always on time.
“Where did you get this idea, anyhow?” José asked.
“I got a business mind,” Arnie said proudly.
“Just like that Bechtel guy,” José retorted.
“That’s right.”
José agreed to a seventy-thirty split, with the condition that Arnie had to help out. Arnie hollered, arguing that some people were meant to work and others to come up with brilliant ideas. He was one of the latter. Still, he agreed after José said it was that or nothing.
In the next two weeks, Arnie found an array of jobs. José peeled off shingles from a rickety garage roof, carried rocks down a path to where a pond would go, and spray-painted lawn furniture. And while Arnie accompanied him, most of the time he did nothing. He did help occasionally. He did shake the cans of spray paint and kick aside debris so that José didn’t trip while going down the path carrying the rocks.
He did stack the piles of shingles, but almost cried when a nail bit his thumb. But mostly he told José what he had missed or where the work could be improved. José was bothered because he and his work had never been criticized before.

Born Worker SCR #1

Question 1

Teach with AI superpowers

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