First thing I’ll say here is that I am a woman, worked at menial day-jobs (mostly in publishing, though there’s lots of other jobs in there) most of my working life. I am 66 now, happily retired from day-jobs, still working with my husband, children and grandchildren for our family business - entertainment. I was never paid enough to make a lifelong ‘career’ out of any job other than entertainment, it’s just that at least one steady paycheck is necessary if your heart’s in the gig economy.
I was art director for our skateboarding magazine - a project of our incorporated publishing company - for the couple of years it existed in Pennsylvania in the late ‘70s. That suffered a sudden and violent end just before we turned 30. Too long a story to tell, suffice it to say that from there we had to find ‘other’ ways of making a bare living, having been cut off from both professional pathways we’d previously pursued. Something the Powers That Be couldn’t directly interfere in to prevent us from making a living. That was a real thing we had to deal with, so we did.
Being as I could type, was computer literate (in what passed for computers at the time), knew how to put a publication together and how to work a darkroom, I was able to get jobs at print shops, newspapers, magazines, book publishers and such, depending on what was available. Because those were specific and in-demand skills, I could command a full buck over whatever the minimum wage was at the time. Never stayed long enough at any of ‘em to go farther, it was just a day-job. I had kids at home, costumes to design and construct, puppets to carve, staging to invent, props to maintain… plus faces to paint, dumb magic tricks to pull off, and balloons to twist come the weekend. We got $100 an hour for that. Deal is, you have to sell the hours…
Anyway, I’m setting the stage for being a college educated professional, publisher/owner of a publishing company, and art director for a monthly 4-color sports mag (it was a deal before the intertoobs), who became a lowly line employee at the bottom end of the scale. Sort of a backwards Cinderella tale, minus Prince Charming (we were already happy forever after — 48 years so far). In a field where certain kinds of knowledge/skill were in great demand, and I knew/could do it all. So while we needed the day-job to keep a steady paycheck coming in throughout the year, I never got so attached to any job or workplace that I wasn’t fully prepared to walk right away from if I felt the need/desire. There would always be another job available. In a city.
Unfortunately, when this whole life situation came to be, we were in a small town a goodly distance from any city of any decent size (100K or more). It was a county seat, so hosted the county newspaper. I was typesetter/graphics (paste-up), because I was the only person in town who was willing to learn (from raw manuals) how to use the fancy new Compugraphic phototypesetting units some slick salesman had convinced Fred the publisher to buy. I’d straightened out some health insurance paperwork issues for him earlier, a two-week gig on recommendation from a relative. Managed to get it all straight in a week so his accountant could see what was what, so he offered me the steady job.
Now, Fred was both important and notorious. He was in his late 60s when I met him, had been publisher of the county rag for 35 years. I’d just turned 30. He knew all the politicians in the region and they all knew him. He always had a ‘trophy’… whatever. Sometimes wives, sometimes live-ins. Always much, much younger than him. Because that’s a deal with these guys. I knew his reputation, but cared not a whit about local gossip in a little town we would leave the minute hub graduated with his computer science degree (a GI Bill sponsored breather). I’ve been a Navy brat and a Navy wife, know how to cut ties and move on. So I kept myself ‘above it’ - semi-personal (first names), but impersonal. Did my job, went on home when the shift was over.
But… but… Fred had a nasty habit of waiting until my co-worker Harold was out of the controlled area to slip up behind me and start rubbing my shoulders. Extremely creepy. I got really good at sliding sideways out of my chair and hiding in the darkroom, always hoping he’d get the hint without me having to confront him on it. Given as I did need the job, and he was the only game in town. He apparently did get the hint, never followed me. Didn’t stop him from slipping up behind me occasionally, though.
The real problem was Harold. Who I nicknamed “Harold the Horrible” (after a comic character, substituting Harold for Hagar), and that’s how I think of him to this day. Harold was a red-headed Air Force retiree, his job was to produce the two double-page grocery ads every week (I did everything else), and he was a Hater. Big time, to hear him tell it.
He hated black people - bragged that he was a founding member of the local Klan chapter - and brown people, and women, and gays, and liberals, and anybody else that ruffled his fur that day. And had the filthiest mouth I’d ever been subjected to. I didn’t take him too seriously despite being cooped up all day with him in the typesetting area, separated from the rest of the print shop by those plastic hangy-down slat-flap things to keep the dust down. Let it go in one ear and out the other, just noise. I didn’t take him too seriously because he was married to a Mexican-American woman and his daughter married a black man. Obviously, THEY didn’t take him too seriously, so why should I?
Then one production night (when we worked all day and way into the night sans overtime until the paper was out on the dock) he and I got into an argument. Which I also didn’t take too seriously, since I don’t recall what it was about. Apparently I pushed one too many buttons though, and the next thing I knew a razor sharp exact-o knife flew past my leg and embedded itself into the corrugated waste box next to the waxer. Whoa. Nobody’d ever thrown a knife at me before, not even my brother! It would have embedded in my thigh had I not been moving at the time…
I pulled it out and marched it right up to him, held it menacingly right under his chin. “You’d better hit me next time,” I said in my best Mad-Mom voice, slow, low and even. “Because if you do this again, I’ll slit your fucking throat with it.”
He believed me.
We moved to the city soon thereafter, so I left it behind as I always have without a second thought. Never again had to put up with anything that awful in a workplace, so it remains unique in my experience both professionally and indentured servitude-wise. I was always ready to walk away if need be, most of the bosses I had picked up on that vibe right away so I had no real trouble.
Anyhoo, that’s my story of harassment at work. It’s never been something uncommon, it’s just been reality for working women in this country for far, far too long and apparently comes with the serfdom territory. Hub and I used to joke about it at night when I’d tell him the day’s adventures. He’s always had the opposite problem - attracts unabashed fans by the dozen, our house was always full - but learned how to capitalize on the fact that people love him. We’ve been here on the ‘stead for 25 years now, some of our clients are third generation. Their family/community Christmas (birthdays/festivals/etc.) wouldn’t be the same without Papa Elf and the elven-folk or the other clowns and characters. It’s all we ever really had in the end, that The Powers That Be couldn’t take away from us. I always like to think maybe they didn’t bother to try all that hard…
[This was inspired by my friend Jon Sitzman’s diary this evening, Please read this. It’s important. You should do that.]
