In the poem "What Work Is," Philip Levine presents an encounter with a person doing the hiring at a factory, a person who doesn't mind letting you know that when it comes to your chances for employment his power is arbitrary and complete (audio and text). The poem's narrator sees someone near himself in the job line whose persistence he notes and admires:

• the sad refusal to give in to

• rain, to the hours wasted waiting,

• to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

• a man is waiting who will say, "No,

• we're not hiring today," for any

• reason he wants.

This type of circumstance, as well as the fuller version of that encounter that Levine offers as he introduces the poem, is probably more common than we'd like to believe: the bureaucrat, backed up by house rules or procedures, does whatever he pleases, and the applicant is without recourse or defense against mistreatment. Reading Vaclav Havel lately, I get the impression that this sort of arbitrary use and abuse of power was utterly commonplace in his homeland in the 1970s and 80s. In the poem nobody finds any way to speak against it, but in the audio introduction Levine tells the story another way, and at least there is the satisfaction of having a say. Not winning, just having a chance to make one's feelings known.