The beginning of the play portrays a hostile work environment that comes across as being very cutthroat. The men are all screaming at one another, and yelling about various deals, and whether they, “closed” or not. There seems to be a great deal of pressure put onto the men that work for this company. They quite literally need to “close deals” in order to feed their families, as we are told, “those guys lived on the business I brought in. They lived on it…so did Murray, John.”
It seems as if Levene is acting as somewhat of a mentor to Williamson. He is trying to help him “get on the board” and close deals. He also gives him advice and says, “Permit me to do this a second. I’m older than you. A man requires a reputation. On the street. What he does when he’s up, what he does otherwise…”
In scene 2 they start out by discussing race. They seem prejudice when saying, “A dead beat Polack” and, “How you goan’a get on the board sell’n a Pollack? And I’ll tell you…I’ll tell you what else. You listening? I’ll tell you what else: don’t ever try to sell an Indian.” In this part it isn’t quite clear whether they are talking about trying to sell homes to Polacks and Indians or the homes of Polacks and Indians.
They then discuss the idea of the contest board that is used at work. It seems to be a tool in order to promote competition between the people in the company. They don’t like the contest board and say, “Some contest board…it’s not right. And it’s not right to the customers.”
At one point Moss goes on a tangent describing how he disagrees with the way the business is run. He believes that instead of tearing people down and putting these ridiculous incentives out there, they should be “build” the business up! At one point he says, “Look look look look, when they build your business, then you can’t fucking turn around, enslave them, treat them like children, fuck them up the ass, leave them to fend for themselves…no.” Although this was a very graphic way of putting it, he definitely get’s his message across very clearly.
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