The Efficiency Expert (1921)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs 

A young college athlete named Jimmy Torrance heads to Chicago confident he can secure a high-paying job based on his personality and campus reputation, only to encounter a humbling series of setbacks. 

He works a string of menial jobs before bluffing his way into a position as a factory efficiency expert despite having no qualifications. 

The novel draws on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ own early struggles with employment, and that semi-autobiographical element gives the opening sections a grounded appeal. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Jimmy’s initial confidence collides with the indifference of the job market, and the episodic progression through low-status positions conveys his gradual adjustment to reality. Even without the author’s usual fantasy trappings, the narrative preserves a familiar ERB structure: a capable protagonist adjusts to an alien environment and prevails through personal resourcefulness, achieving success and winning the affection of a romantic “princess” figure. The book often feels clichéd and predictable. Jimmy’s rise depends less on believable development than on clumsy coincidence and the assumption that charm and determination naturally translate into competence. Jimmy’s friends from the wrong side of the tracks are stock figures—the honorable thief and the hooker with a heart of gold—and Burroughs’ use of dialect is an obstacle to smooth reading and does not feel genuine. Still, the novel remains an interesting oddity within Burroughs’ body of work.