The Trials of Job....Part 3 of 3

See Part 1 Here
See Part 2 Here


Around ten o'clock that night Harry announced the floor show. Especially for Chairman, in pranced a woman in a very short school girl uniform who presented Chairman with first of all her breasts (on a tray) and then her behind. I looked around at everyone hooting and thigh-slapping. I glanced at Yvonne who was just as appalled as I was. Then Schoolgirl set up her music machine and proceeded to strip. Slowly. Down to her pasties and g-string. To uproarious laughter, Chairman pulled out his wallet and inserted dollar bills in any gap or orifice he found on her body.

I got up and quietly left. It was just before Christmas and I thought, I will call in sick. I will call in sick for as long as it takes. I will get a medical certificate. Maybe they'll fire me. Oh please let them fire me and give me severance. Please. And then I can get unemployment insurance while I look for a job, any other job.

Ten days later, I finally showed up at work only to have Harry call me into his office before I had taken off my coat. He regretted, etc., it wasn't working out at all, etc., I lacked the company spirit, blah-blah, they would give me severance in lieu, etc. I restrained my glee. Unseemly laughter and joy might remove the severance package. Still coated, I went into my office and prepared the papers and the cheque and had Harry sign them all but I could not contain myself in the parking lot. I danced in front of the Lincoln, I danced on the lawn and then fled the scene, jacking up the music on the car radio, screaming my release to the sky.

If there is a hell I've done my freshman, junior and senior years. Remember that, Mr. Jesus Jones. When it comes time, I mean.

The Trials of Job....Part 2 of 3

See Part 1 here.

To add to the fun, Harry was a firm believer in socializing. Golf days, bowling days, baseball days, barbeque days, picnics in public park days. This was a far, far worse nightmare than the office. And there was no choice on attendance as he was encouraging company spirit by (a) giving the day off and (b) paying us all. I remember at one baseball hoot where I wasn't chosen to go on either of the teams, sitting on a bleacher and thinking: “Sweet Mr. Jesus Jones, what effing planet have I landed on” amidst the squeals of delight and laughter all around me as the others ran around in their Briggs Blue uniforms. I got to the point where I thought I was the one at fault. Why the hell wasn't I a Stepford Munchkin like the rest of them?

I was saved from hare-kari by Yvonne who was the quality control supervisor in the plant and who also wasn't chosen for one of the fun-filled baseball game teams. She turned out to be Harry's sister-in-law (sister to his wife) and just about hated his guts as he did hers. I could see the grim set of his mouth when he saw us together. Yvonne was employed there because of her husband who was Harry's best friend and was the shipping manager.

When you're trapped like that, very much a square peg in a round hole, there's very little energy left over to seek another job. It's all about survival - there are kids and other responsibilities of the household. This one pay cheque away from disaster life does exist. I lived it. And I'm sure my ill-concealed misery and isolation did not endear me to anyone there, apart from Yvonne who was suffering equally. We were on the outside looking in on this surreal blue comraderie and non-stop jollity, Harry in the middle grinning benevolence on everyone but us, poking his staff on the shoulders from behind their office chairs to raucous laughter, telling off colour jokes involving animal sex et al to his appreciative audience who lapped it all up. I felt my face was set in a permanent lemony pruney construct. The nun amongst the rabble. I was absolutely wretched.

I stuck it out, made the best of it, sat for hours in the computer room (yeah, those were the days!) inserting those huge old floppy disks into behemoth machines, feeding room sized printers with enormous boxes of perforated paper with 4 layers of carbon, tapping those huge old keyboards, listening to the grinding and chugging of all the machinery around me, waiting for the weekly breakdowns of some essential component like the printer or the floppy drives or an outraged orange message on the tiny black screen of the (blue) monitor. Sitting with Harry in his office, reviewing all this vomitous output. Harry liked to highlight and annotate every line with a (blue) highlighter so he could revise and revise and revise his annual budgets every month (seriously!), all changes that I had to input over many hours and for a grand finale to this he would obsess about minescule government tax rebates which took me forever to complete in triplicate. On a typewriter.

It all came to a head for me at the Christmas Party held at a swanky hotel which involved dinner and dancing and a special floor show for the chairman from California who was our guest of honour. I sat with Yvonne and her husband. To this day I thank Yvonne. a very funny Yorkshire woman.

To be continued.

The Trials of Job....Part 1 of 3

I've written about some of my workplaces before but here is one from the other side of the fence, so to speak. There were a few of those too. Here's one:

In chatting with Daughter the other day, I was recalling a particularly appalling work position I took back in the day when I was in my late thirties. I was hired as controller/office manager in a small manufacturing plant I'll call “Briggs”. There were five in my department who reported to me. What struck me as odd from the beginning was that I was the tallest person in the office at 5' 8”. The president was a wee British man, and by wee I mean about 5' 3”. (Sorry, I'm of the age where metric for the most part is a challenge.) The two salesmen were equally short. And I noted I drove the smallest car. The president, Harry, drove a blue Lincoln Continental with a cushion on the driver's seat to keep his head above the steering wheel.

From my very first day there I sensed a resentment from my staff. They had adored my predecessor, Vivian, whom I had met during the transition. I had the impression that they firmly believed that Lucy, the accounts payable clerk, should have succeeded Vivian. Lucy ruled the roost now that Vivian was gone.

There were very strict rules in the office. Every pencil, note pad cover, pen, paper clip, stapler and coffee cup had to be in the colour favoured by the company, fondly called “Briggs Blue”. Even the office chairs, in-baskets, and out-baskets, teapots and water cooler. No other colour was allowed. Harry was adamant on this. Harry liked to stand behind us as we worked. He would come into my office and walk behind my chair and even when questioned as to what he wanted, he would just humph and say in his nasal cockney voice “Oh carry on, carry on, act loik I'm not 'ere.” It only took me a half a day to find this behaviour offputting - and I reported to the man!

Single mothers with a household to maintain can't be choosy when it comes to employment. I persisted in trying to turn this whole scene around. I was able to escape every day with the bank deposit for I had taken that task away from the credit manager, but not without a struggle. I added office supply shopping, purchase of bank drafts and letters of credit and mail pickups and drop-offs to my daily outing and then added my lunch hour. I could escape every day for two hours. Liberation! A brief reprieve!

I mentally prepared myself every morning when I got up for my "Blue Life with the Munchkins”. Mean-spirited, I know, but in this hostile atmosphere (and it was increasingly so) it was sometimes the only humourous thought that would get me through those workdays.

To be continued.