I was 18. My stepmother wanted me to get a summer job to help pay for college.
I came home from one interview and explained to her that they didn't want to hire someone just for the summer.
"Don't tell them you're leaving at the end of the summer," she said. "Say you're taking a year off from college."
"I don't want to lie," I said.
She glared at me. "Then you don't really want a job."
Rather than face further anger, I did as I was told.
I went to the Dexter Shoe Company offices in the Park Square Building in Boston, and told them I was taking a year off from college.
I was hired to do data entry.
There were about 14 of us, all women, some Black, but mostly White, like me.
The 2 managers, both White women, kept strict account of of our time.
We were to start exactly at 8. (Or was it 9? I can't remember now, but no matter.) I would try to show up early because subway transit is unpredictable. We were told not to start working until 8. (Let's say 8.) Once I was reading a science fiction paperback at my workstation waiting for work time to begin. A manager told me not to do that--it didn't look right. I should get a cup of coffee or something else if I was there early.
There was a sign-out sheet for morning and afternoon bathroom breaks: one line with time out and time back for the morning and another similar line for the afternoon.
I've always had "to go" a lot, since elementary school. In this job, if I went twice in the morning, I'd just squeeze in both times in the morning line, etc. I wasn't reprimanded for that, so I didn't worry about it.
After some weeks, during a routine review, the two managers asked if there was a reason why I had to go so often, but if it was personal I didn't have to tell them. It was easiest to mumble yes I don't want to talk about it. They backed off.
There was a middle-aged red-headed co-worker who was pregnant. Pregnancy was understood by all as a reasonable excuse for frequent bathroom trips. I suspected the managers thought I was also possibly pregnant, because that would be a good explanation.
Our productivity was measured by monitoring software, and my score on that was good, at least average.
One day a willowy young Black woman was hired. I watched one of our Black co-workers, possibly the contact through whom she'd got the job, show her the bathroom sign-out sheet. She said: "You're allowed to go once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Here is where you sign your times out and in."
I didn't butt in to say, "No, you can go whenever you need to" because what if I was wrong? If that indeed was the rule, I didn't want to officially know it.
The red-headed woman was friendly and chatty. She chatted with me in the Ladies Room if we happened to be there at the same time. She chatted with our new co-worker. She learned our new thin willowy co-worker was also pregnant.
With the best of intentions, she told the manager that the new worker was pregnant, so they shouldn't think it amiss if the new worker went to the bathroom more frequently than the others.
The new worker was fired by the end of the day. The managers emphasized she wasn't fired for being pregnant, but for not saying she was pregnant during the interview. She was fired for lying. Though how was that lying? I don't think what they did is legal now. Maybe it was in 1979.
The red-headed woman said she felt awful that her good intentions led to hell.
The Black woman who was a friend of the fired worker said they shouldn't have fired her right away because "She was thinking of getting an abortion."
I thought: I believe in choice, but they're not giving her one. If she can't work, she'll have to get an abortion. That's no choice.
I don't think it even occurred to me to say that to management. I was a wimp and also working there under a lie.
When I quit at the end of the summer I said I'd changed my mind about taking the year off. The manager did not look surprised.
The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story by Kermit Roosevelt III
