The pay window was a hole in the wall with a woman behind it and the woman had your envelope and the envelope had your cash. That was payday. You stood in line and you gave your name and the woman found your envelope and you signed the book and you walked away with money. Real money. Paper money. Money you could feel in your pocket and count on the bus and spend before you got home.

The pay window had a line every Friday. The line was the most honest conversation on the job. Nobody lied in the pay line. The foreman did not pretend to like you. You did not pretend to like the foreman. You both stood in line and you both wanted the same thing and the woman behind the window gave it to you in alphabetical order. The pay window was the only democracy in the factory.

My father stood in a pay line at a printing plant on Varick Street every Friday for twenty-two years. He said the line was the only time the boss and the worker stood the same way. Both standing. Both waiting. Both watching the woman count. The pay window was the great equalizer. It lasted eleven minutes a week and then the hierarchy came back.

The direct deposit killed the pay window. The money goes from the company to the bank and the bank puts a number on your screen and the number says you got paid. But you did not get paid. A number changed. You did not hold anything. You did not sign anything. You did not stand in a line with the people you worked with and watch the same woman count the same money. The pay window gave you a ritual. The direct deposit gave you a notification. The ritual was better.

The last pay window I saw was in a garment shop on West Thirty-Eighth Street in 1971. The woman had been counting money for thirty years. She knew every name. She knew who had overtime and who did not. She knew who would cash the check at the bodega on the corner and who would take the subway to the bank. The pay window knew more about the workers than the boss ever did. And now the money moves in silence and nobody knows anything about anybody.

See also: Pushcart, Rent Strike