Working Class Struggles in Fight Club, Chapters 1 - 15

After forming Fight Club, Tyler and "Jack" are servers in a hotel, where they frequently sabotage the food of the patrons, including:

• "I got mine hard and stuck it in all their orange mousses" (80). -- Jack, referring to his penis
• "[Tyler and Jack] farted on a whole cart of Boccone Dolce for the Junior League Tea" (80).
• Tyler pees in the soup in an elevator (80)

They do this, because they feel that the patrons of the hotel restaurant take advantage of them, and my evidence follows:

• "The giants, they'll send something back to the kitchen for no reason at all. They just want to see you run around for their money. A dinner like this, these banquet parties, they know the tip is already included in the bill so they treat you like dirt" (80).
• "Tyler and me, we've turned into the guerilla terrorists of the service industry. Dinner party saboteurs. The hotel caters dinner parties, and when somebody wants the food, they get the food and the wine and the chine and the glassware and the waiters. They get the works, all on one bill. And because they know they can't threaten you with the tip, they treat you like a cockroach" (81).

At the same time, Tyler also worked as a projectionist at a movie theater, where he spliced hundreds of single frames from pornographic films into hundreds of reels of family movies.

Later, "Jack" goes to his employer at the hotel while Tyler goes to his employer at the movie theater, and they both use their knowledge of what they had done against their employers to get free money. It is their way of sticking it to the man.

On Tyler's side, here is what was said:

• "Under and behind and inside everything the man took for granted, something had been growing" (112).
• "'I am trash,' Tyler said. 'I am trash and shit and crazy to you and this whole fucking world,' Tyler said to the union president. 'You don't care where I live or how I feel or what I eat or how I feed my kids or how I pay the doctor if I get sick, and yes I am stupid and bored and weak, but I am still your responsibility'" (115).

On Jack's side, here is what happened:

• "I told how I'd been peeing into the soup, farting into the creme brulees, sneezing on braised endive, and now I wanted the hotel to send me a check every week equivalent to my average week's pay plus tip. IN return, I wouldn't come to work anymore, and I wouldn't go to the newspapers or the public health people with a confused, tearful confession" (114).

The boss calls his bluff, so Jack calls a newspaper and begins to explain that over the last several months, he had been "protesting" at work. He says, "My protest is over the exploitation of the workers in the service industry" (115).

The boss grabs the phone and hangs it up and calls security, so Jack gets into a fight with himself, and frames the boss. Security walks in as Jack begs the boss not to hit him anymore, so Jack gets his pay in order to keep quiet about everything, so that the boss doesn't get in trouble for beating him.

The movie adaptation was slightly different, as this fight took place in Jack's office job, but it is still very interesting to watch.

By this point, it is very clear that there is a struggle between the working class and upper class, but they are just getting started.