Each day I go to the convalescent home and walk in and see him sitting there and I am the ONLY person there that knows he was an amazing, genius of a man, one who had worked as hard as any successful man could and one that raised a family, he was the most loving husband a woman could know and a man that cared about all living things and made sure nobody ever needed and now there he sits with Alzheimer’s.
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Work: a future retrospective
I am a historian on the interstellar environment Samsara, circa 3200. I explore the many time capsules that were loaded aboard the craft before we departed earth. The capsules were loaded helter-skelter in the pre-launch rush, but I take great delight in randomly sampling their contents.
Today I found several intriguing artifacts that had worked themselves up through a data capsule from the early Anthropocene* era. The artifacts featured images, precisely pressed into the porous surface of compressed wood pulp, known as paper. Paper came from the time of trees, when men — only men — toiled mightily to fell the trees under the beauty of eco-systems called forests. I felt intrigued but sad: the action seemed contradictory, that people would work so hard to destroy natural beauty. There must have been a reason.
After analyzing the graphics for days and pondering, I began to understand that the images told a story from a time of work. In this work era (circa 1900 – 2200) , people competed for the right to join authoritarian hierarchies where they were ordered to perform mind-numbing, repetitive, sometimes dangerous acts in exchange for currency. Currency, often called “wages” was a medium designed to represent use value — as if people’s worth depended on how much repetitive or dangerous work they could withstand.
The people who worked received currency which they could exchange for commodities — food, clothing, shelter, mobility — and services. None of these commodities were morphed into their lives as they are today.
As I studied the data capsule’s graphics, I began to question how much we take for granted about our natural and civil rights. These graphics also suggested that, if groups or individuals were unable to perform these “works,” they would be cast out of society and even be allowed to starve or die of disease.
The graphics also revealed that currency was unequally distributed. It may seem contradictory, but many individuals or small groups could gather enormous amounts of currency, more than they could “spend,” or “exchange” for commodities. These individuals and groups were often connected — through a synthetic form of symbiosis called hegemony — to those who decided who would work and who would not. These decisions were often based — not on ability — but on a potential worker’s placement in the hierarchy, their facility within narrow intelligence spectra, and even physical appearance.
The workers (men, women, and animals who worked, as the word suggests) seemed to have little or no power over how many “wages” they could earn. The graphics seem to suggest that the worker people began, over centuries, to gather together into a critical mass they called “One Big Union.” They considered these gatherings to be powerful.
Although the first worker gatherings began centuries earlier, the One Big Union group represented in the posters had evolved into the International Workers of the World or IWW, possibly pronounced “Eww.”
The Ewws seemed at times to stand at a crossroads. Some wanted to demand wages called “fair pay” suggesting justice or satisfaction could be enjoyed by toiling for currency. Others wanted, as far back as these centuries-old ancestors, to abolish the entire system of currency, as if they were predicting our own world.
I have not yet determined how much meaning they placed in this toil. Certainly there must have been times, as we enjoy now, when people either inherited or fought for the right to health, beauty, imagination, and creativity. Some may even have taken meaning from doing these dangerous, repetitive, or mind-numbing jobs. However, for many, if you lost your work, your life would have no meaning. Can you imagine the jeopardy that suggests?
If you’re interested in these glimpses into our ancestors’ past, I urge you to approach those ancient times with respect and to understand how completely we are accustomed to enjoying health, beauty, imagination and creativity as our human and animal rights.
As I explored other glimpses of this One Big Union, its heritage and legacy, I had the eerie feeling that I was missing a cross-current that may have been present during this time of work. Is it possible that they found joy and love amidst these cruel conditions? Is it possible that people took pride in gathering together to fight for work? Could they have gained satisfaction or a sense of accomplishment from participating in this work for survival?
Life is complex. History offers lessons for the present. Even far up the ages, with all that has changed, it seems as if work may have brought with it, a certain nobility. I must explore further this great and long-lasting battle. I can only hope that deeper examination will tell us much about our past… and our present.
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*An·thro·po·cene — the geological age during which human activity became the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Geologists estimate that the anthropocene age began between the mid-18th century and 1950, EWT (Eurocentric World Time).
60% of the Revenue, 40% Less Stock
I interviewed for a year, but it was a start-up and they weren’t ready to hire salespeople. I was looking to leave the software company I worked for and come to this one, as the product was a good fit with what I already knew. In fact, it could serve as a friendlier front-end to my current product and I was the perfect person to introduce it to the world, having been the most successful salesperson at my current company.
When they were ready, they hired three of us, Mehmet, Drew and myself. We all had the same offer letter and started the same day. But Mehmet’s territory was the whole East Coast except New England. Drew had the rest of the country. I had New England including greater New York, but not the city itself. I protested to the president of the company. No way was that fair, but he said salespeople always wanted more territory and just do my job. I also was not allowed to hold Hardee’s Food Systems in Rocky Mount, NC. They asked me to call as soon as I got to the new company, since they already wanted my new product. Mehmet made the call, got the sale and told me they had signed strictly on the basis that I was with this new company. I got no credit.
I also became pregnant a month after joining this little start-up of 15 people. I didn’t tell anyone, but did have “morning sickness” all day. People at the office became annoyed when I ran to the bathroom to throw up, thinking I was contagious. I finally had to confess that what I had, they couldn’t catch! It didn’t take long for them to figure things out. Within a few months, I felt better and had a few good leads that I pursued. I don’t chase my tail. I am good at screening out tire-kickers and only chase down leads that I think have potential. I am not afraid to ask for the order and am good at closing business. I also set up a strategic partnership with Arthur Andersen.
I grew bigger and bigger. I put on 42 pounds in total and worked until two weeks of my due date. My manager had recently been through a nasty divorce and I think that affected his view of women. He didn’t take a shine to me, a strong, successful woman. He wanted to stay close to home before the 4th of July holiday, so asked to come on a call with me to Combustion Engineering in Stamford, CT. He drove, I did the sales pitch. He had never seen me in action, though it was one month before the start of my maternity leave. The call went well. He was impressed. Really? Did he think I would be incompetent?
My clients from Westinghouse referred to my maternity dress as something made by “Omar the tent-maker” (couldn’t say that today, but this was 31 years ago). The Featured Image is the company picnic. I am the curly-haired (it’s a perm) big-bellied lady on the right. The president is wearing red shorts in the center of the photo, looking to his left. My manager is kneeling to the left of me (actually, my right side), with the receding hair line.
I closed business with Westinghouse, Combustion Engineering, Gillette…I don’t even remember who else. Aetna was in the works. Mehmet closed it and I did get credit for that. At the time I went out on maternity leave, the amount of stock we salespeople were being granted still had not been voted on by the Board. I, personally, was responsible, in 10 months time, for 60% of the revenue of the entire company. I had planned to take a 4 month, unpaid maternity leave.
I left on August 2, 1985. A few days later, the letter arrived telling me the stock grant. It was 40% smaller than my two male colleagues. I called the president. He lived a few blocks away. I asked if he could come by for a talk. I asked why, given my actual performance, I had been voted less stock than the other salesmen. He told me my manager hadn’t made a strong case for me in the Board meeting. He went on to say that I had fewer sales calls than the others and my pipeline wasn’t as long, and I seemed to be in the office more. Of course I was. I could make a call in the morning and still come in, since I had the LOCAL territory! But I had CLOSED MORE BUSINESS! That was irrefutable.
I talked to a lawyer friend. She said I had a clear case of discrimination, but judges hated cases like that (1985) and if I ever wanted to work again, I should just walk away, which is what I did. I stayed home with David, who was born on August 20, for 18 months. I really don’t know what happened to the software product I sold, but some of the principals in the company have gone on to other successful ventures. I took my lumps and added to my feminist cred.
GOING
The last time I was at the old deli, it was Christmas time. My brother had wanted to go out to the bank to get some cash to put in cards for gifts. Pre ATM days.
He’d not been able to do any shopping and he wanted to have something to give to the kids. As Nana got older, she always gave cash for Christmas. It seems to be some kind of omen in our family – giving cash for Christmas – an omen signifying impeding doom.
Shopping for Christmas gifts apparently is one of the last faculties to go. With Nana, it started as sending checks to the geographically distant grandchildren. By the time she was in her 90’s, buying, wrapping and mailing in advance became something of a chore. But, once the local grandchildren started receiving cash in a card instead of the usual mittens and scarves, we knew something was seriously wrong.
That day, the day of the outing, was a cold, gray, sunless one. It was just before the Winter Solstice. It was the kind of day the Druids must have dreaded. Dreary. The days were getting shorter and shorter; grayer and grayer. Fortunately, those Druids had the foresight to establish a festival of light to bring the daylight back from the abyss of the dying. Whether we call it Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanza, we all need that festival of light, that reprieve from the darkness. Sometimes, it even works.
Alan had wanted to go to the bank. So, we bundled his frail body against the cold and set out into the chill gray of the year’s shortest day.
Those blood transfusions of the previous week didn’t give him much except a fever. The day after the transfusion, he was in the same weak state he’d been in the day before. He’d been down a quart or so, but I guess he must have had an undetected leak somewhere or else his body just ate up the new blood -eating it up and spitting it out, transformed into the same tainted, T-cell deprived stuff he’d started with.
We’d expected so much from those transfusions. They were going to be the magic potion, our Christmas miracle. Your blood stinks? No problem, sir. Step right up. We’ll give you some more. Drive right in. We’ll check and top off all your fluids. Fifteen minutes or less or the next one’s free. He was probably entitled to a few free transfusions because for sure, the ones he got were duds. Or, maybe it was just his body that was a dud.
Wrapped and swaddled against the cold, looking like a six-foot toddler dressed by his overprotective mother for a day of sledding, he walked the few steps from the parking lot to the bank. The ordeal, and it was an ordeal, was too much for him. I took care of the transaction while he caught his breath. He was exhausted, but he had his cash for the kids’ cards.
Could he eat? How about something hot to drink? How about just getting out of the cod for a few minutes? The deli was right next door; the deli he’d always loved. I’d always avoided it, but he loved it. As children, we’d been raised on white bread, never whitefish, but his decades of living in New York had somehow transformed him into a deli-connoisseur. For some reason, he loved it.
I have no ethnicity. I have no warm happy memories of food – food for cheer or comfort. While others relish sliced tongue on sisal, I’ll have raisin bread with grape jelly. The cacophony of smells – pickles, brisket, fish and knockwurst – assault rather than soothe my olfactory sense. A deli is not a place where I’ll seek solace.
“Let’s have the latkes” I said with perhaps a little too much bubbly enthusiasm. He was sick, but he wasn’t stupid. He saw right through me. The combination of the choking thrush in his throat and the potentially toxic cocktail of untested drugs he was taking had successfully eradicated any vestige of appetite he might have had. He had basically been starving for weeks and I took it as my personal mission to see to it that some food passed those lips. I’d do whatever it took, even if it meant sitting at a Formica table inhaling the essence of bagels and sable fish.
The potato latkes were always a favorite of his – too oniony for my taste, hot and greasy. We ordered them with applesauce. I was convinced that the applesauce was essential to lubricate your innards as the latkes burned their way through your gullet. He moved his food around on his plate, feigning eating. After a few minutes, he stopped even that charade. His eyes, although he’d only seen 42 winters, looked at me from sockets sunk deep into his skull – an ancient wizened sage.
Quietly, almost in a whisper, he said “I think I’d like to go.”
The Long & Winding Road
If you look at my career path (and I’ve had many careers) they would look like a winding road. In college, I had my heart set on being a lighting designer on Broadway. I worked at Marriott’s Great America for the first 4 seasons they were open and provided the lighting designs for 2 of the shows I worked on – Silver Screen and Bugs Bunny’s Wonder Circus. I also did some work in community theatre when the park was closed for the season. Due to family responsibilities, I never made it to broadway – at least not to work. I was able to work in the entertainment industry for a great number of years, which is more than many people who want to make a career in the theater business are able to say.
My first full time job was as a motion picture projectionist at a small art house in Walnut Creek CA. The El Rey (yes, I know its redundant) Theatre was a gem of a venue showing great flicks from around the world. Also The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Fridays and Saturdays at midnight. I worked there until it finally closed its doors to make way for the Walnut Creek Civic Plaza construction. It still makes me sad to think of the old place being torn down.
While working as a projectionist, I made connections with other theatre managers, which allowed me to find work at the nearby Festival Cinemas (now also gone). I worked with Festival Cinemas in multiple locations, including as a secretary in their home offices, for about 10 years. The skills I built there, working in management and office support, were to be useful a few careers later.
Since non-union theatre jobs don’t pay particularly well, I needed to work multiple jobs. During my stint at the El Rey, I trained a friend to be a projectionist, so that he could use a connection to get into the union (IATSE). He returned the favor and brought me into the union, a few years later. I worked relief shifts in projection booths around the East Bay, as well as finally being able to start working as a stage hand at the Concord Pavilion. This made for some really long days, but I enjoyed getting back into the live production scene. Ultimately, my stagehand career allowed me to work on film and television productions, as well as supporting dozens of touring shows that passed through the area. During this period, the projectionist positions added an element of theatre maintenance, and I was trained to work on HVAC systems, repair seats, lighting and pretty much everything in the facility. This also turned out to be useful in a later career.
In the early 1990’s the road took a dramatic turn. I met and ultimately married my husband. When we met, I lived and worked in the east bay and he lived and worked in the south bay. When I moved in with him, the commute started to become more than difficult – especially if I had a gig that ended at 2 in the morning. I began looking for work in the south bay. I first approached the union local in that area, but found them to be disorganized. I’d also be starting from scratch on the call list. This is where we go back to the experiences I had in the main office of Festival Cinemas. I started looking into Administrative Assistant roles. My background was very different from the majority of applicants, and most hiring managers couldn’t imagine how my diversity could be applicable to an Admin position. Finally, a Biotech startup took a chance on me as an admin supporting the Director of Operations. He was interested in me because of that facility maintenance experience at the theaters. They were about to embark on a facility expansion, and I had the good fortune to learn on the job how to work with architects, general contractors, and site supervisors. I was also thrown into the world of procurement since I had to specify and purchase cubicle, scientific equipment and all the elements that go into outfitting a biotech facility.
After a couple years there, my boss change, and I wasn’t able to find a way to work with the new guy – who like to bellow at me from inside his office. I had made more connections by that time, and upgraded my resume, so off I went to a hight tech company: Network Appliance, now known as NetApp. There I continued my work as a Facilities Specialist, and ultimately built several buildings containing office and manufacturing space as well as computer data centers. I had a great 12 year run with them. In the later years, I built and operated an HD video production facility, where we produced training and sales videos, as well as being an early pioneer of live streaming events such as company meetings.
Jumping to the present, I’ve started a consulting business developing WordPress websites for small and family businesses here in Hawaii. I don’t look for work, and am happy with purely referral business. I’m spending much of my time going back to the theatre. I have done some performance at Diamond Head Theatre, which was something I’d been wanting to do since high school. I’m also taking dance classes – another thing that I’d had to miss out on earlier in life. I’m not very good, but I love the learning and fitness that comes along with the classes, as well as the friends I’ve made.
How I Got My Equity Card
I have graduated from college. I have graduated from acting school. I am a professional actor. Or I would be a professional actor if I had ever gotten a union job.
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My first job….
My parents–well, really my father — would not allow me to work, other than babysitting, before I was an adult. ‘Adult’ was apparently something my father thought he could proclaim when the time came and not necessarily on my 21st birthday. My babysitting money got me through adolescence.
You see, my Dad was raised during the Depression, and to him it was a sign of success and his hard work that allowed him to support a family in which HIS wife and daughters did not have to work. It also meant that we were dependent on him. As luck would have it, Mom was one of the original Feminists, and SHE thought that women should have knowledge and self-sufficiency, so she quietly supported me and my sister in our efforts to gain some freedom from Dad’s purse strings. She was very cool that way.
But working…having a job and a boss and having to be on time and responsible…that stuff somehow was incomprehensible to me. I was a horrid employee when I started working. Not because I didn’t know the work, or the score, or what I should do, but because I had never been responsible for anything, ever. So I learned the hard way, and I learned by feeling like an idiot most of the time until I wasn’t one anymore. I really, really hated feeling like an idiot. I knew that I was capable of more, but I had never had to demonstrate it.
My first job ever was working the midnight shift in a plastics factory which made small molded toys and parts such as GI Joe figures, the top button covers of seatbelt buckles, and other small items. It was Hell as far as I was concerned. I learned two very important things: I did not like someone assuming that I would not follow rules, and I cannot survive without human interaction. Upon my arrival on the first day, I stood listening to a woman who shouted the rules of engagement: NO talking with coworkers, NO bathroom breaks unless I asked the foreman, NO extra breaks of any kind, NO asking anyone anything unless it was the shift foreman…..I was terrified. What must those who worked in such jobs felt, decades before I was ever born? I remember thinking that if they survived THAT, then I surely could survive with ….wait. No, I could not. Because I DID NOT HAVE TO. It was an eye-opener, and I have never forgot it. Perspective hurts sometimes, but it’s critical to insight.,
After five days, I quit that job. I fled. think I may have never gone back for my meager paycheck. I don’t remember. Then I got a job as a waitress which got me through college for the next four years. That job involved talking with people, and the rules didn’t seem so authoritarian. I could think and smile and talk. And I could follow rules with which I was familiar.
I was grateful for every paycheck, every tip, I was grateful for what I learned about people, I learned to stand up for myself, and I am STILL grateful for the independence I earned. When I was employed in my first professional job, I was stunned that my paycheck actually paid bills. I learned that working not only earns a living but also a life: gratitude, gratification, pride, capability, strength, responsibility, and insight. All things that have carried me through life. I wish that for everyone. I am humbled.
Two Hard Jobs
After college, when I wasn’t yet ready to start doing something serious with my BA in English (that is, teach, the only option I knew of besides being a secretary), I did a few miscellaneous short-term jobs to get some experience of the working life. Two of them stand out in my memory, both of them terrible but in different ways.
For a while I worked for Manpower, which sent me to various places, all of which I’ve forgotten except for Nelson Tire, located off the freeway in Oakland. The office was at the front of the building, and at the back was a huge shop full of car tires and truck tires and tire tools and smudged and grimy guys working on tires and making a lot of noise. My job was filing. On my desk in the morning would be a stack of papers, all of them gritty with rubber dust. I was to put each one in its proper file drawer. That was it. Pick up papers, put them in drawers. It seems in my memory that I did that job for months, but it was probably only a couple of weeks. I survived it by driving over to the Oakland Airport at lunchtime and eating my cucumber and cheese sandwiches there while watching the travelers hurrying off to interesting destinations. Nelson Tire revealed to me a level of deadly boringness I had not experienced before, not even at my previous summer job in the Stanford Athletic Department, proofreading every single football ticket for the eighty-thousand-seat stadium.
The other post-college job I recall vividly was at an Oakland child care center in the Fruitvale neighborhood. I worked with the four- and five-year-olds who came before and after their brief hours of kindergarten. It was a poor neighborhood; most of the children were black. I’d had, previously, no experience with child care, no experience with children this age, and no experience with poverty. (Why did they hire me?) Everything about the job was overwhelming–the noise, the chaos, the smells, the children’s neediness, and my own deep ineptitude. I remember some adorable children (a tiny girl named April who smelled like sewage and said in a hoarse little voice with a big enchanting grin, “Tie my shoe, honey!”), some frightening children (Aaron, who jumped up on my back in the playground and toppled me to the ground), and some heartbreaking children (Angelique, in whom I sensed both a sharp intelligence and a fierce rebelliousness, a combo that probably boded ill for her future). It was an intensely interesting job (the opposite of Nelson Tire), but I could not do it. I had no idea how to manage and instruct this swirling, shrieking herd of children, how to keep them safe from each other and from the perils that threatened them, how to keep myself safe from them. One day, during the time the children weren’t there, I was sweeping the floor, and another of the teachers, a no-nonsense black woman who had been there for years, took the broom from me impatiently. “You don’t even know how to sweep a floor,” she said.
That was toward the end of my period of short-term jobs. I went back to school for my teaching credential, and ended up teaching high school English. That was hard, too, but it was not boring and it was not impossible.
The Dead Book by Jane Churchon
I like to take my time when I pronounce someone dead.
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No Marketable Skills
“What are you going to do?” they asked. “You’re an academic!"
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