The Adding Machine

“There’s no five-thirty for me. I don’t wait for no whistle. I don’t get no vacations neither. And what’s more I don’t get no pay envelope every Saturday night neither.”

In this first scene, Mrs. Zero delivers a monologue to her husband as she prepares herself for bed. Much of the speech is comprised of complaints she holds against him, and comparisons she makes between the two of them on a personal level, in terms of society’s traditional expectations of them as housewife and breadwinner.

“I was a fool for marryin’ you. If I’d ‘a’ had any sense, I’d ‘a’ known from the start. I wish I had it to do over again, I hope to tell you.”

This passage is from later in the same scene, after Mrs. Zero has worked herself up quite a bit and has delivered the majority of her speech. Mrs. Zero places a lot of importance and worth on her husband’s job, in terms of its reflection on their position in society and amongst their friends. At this point, she has convinced herself of her husband’s complacency and lack of ambition, two traits she finds embarrassing and that she feels reflect poorly on her.

“Aw, don’t be givin’ me so many orders […] I don’t have to take it from you and what’s more I won’t.”

From the beginning of Scene 2, Zero and Daisy are at one another’s throats. They trade quips about making each other sick, and Daisy implores Zero to “quit bein’ so bossy,” but he doesn’t. In fact, his next demand is that she “tend to her work.” This is included to show that not only do some women find their space in the “modern” workplace of 1923, but that no women seem to take Zero seriously as a threatening presence––neither in the workplace or the home.