Memories of My Mom on Mother’s Day, 2023

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2023
Images from the Francos collection

A Memory of My Mom on Mother’s Day, 2023

October 19, 2023, would have been my mom's 97th birthday, being born in 1927, but she never made it past June 25, 1981. I am more than a decade older now than she had ever been.

This piece is to celebrate Helen Rosen. The Rosen siblings are, in order of age from eldest to youngest, Miriam, Elsie, Eli and Helen. Elsie is the last remaining sister, approaching the century mark this coming October (living in Boca Raton, Florida, the last time I saw her was on her 90th birthday). I used to love going to her house in Queens before she retired South, and would spend a couple of weeks in Flushing, NY, every summer when my mother could not take my energy anymore. Elsie made the best noodle kugel in the world. But I digress…

Driving mom crazy at Camp HES, about 1965

Helen was born in Brooklyn in 1926, the first American generation of the maternal family, and her first language was Yiddish. She did not learn to speak English until she went to school. She grew up in the then-highly Jewish Williamsburg neighborhood, and was quickly nicknamed – for obvious reasons – Blondie. Eventually, she would go by Lynn. Her neighbors included Mel Brooks, and drummer Buddy Rich. In fact, her best friend then, Millie (aka Lefty), married Mel’s brother right after he returned from World War II from the Air Force where he was a bomber pilot.

Helen on the far left, Chickie next to her

In her teens, the family moved to the Bensonhurst area in one apartment, and then to another where I was conceived (I was born in the no-longer existing Brooklyn Doctor’s Hospital). But more on that later. She attended an all-girl’s high school, which she hated. My mom loved the boys, and the estrogen-fueled locale was not for her. She dropped out of high school, but not before picking up a smoking habit, with Kent being her brand of choice.

During the war, she first dated a guy whose last name was Schmuckman. She eventually told me, “I liked him too much, so I dropped him. I refused to be Mrs. Schmuckman.” She did get engaged to somebody after that, who never returned from the battlefield.

She was on a blind date with a friend, Chickie, in 1947. The story goes, the two men walked into the room, saw them sitting there, and one of the guys turned to the other and said, “The blonde is mine,” though he was being set up with Chickie. That was my father, Leo Francos.

Helen and Leo were married in 1948, and after a Honeymoon in Quebec City, moved into the Rosen apartment. My grandmother, Sadie, did not like my father (he was a handful…think a smaller Archie Bunker), and she and the rest of the family moved out. My immediate family stayed in that apartment, in one form or another, until 2009.

Honeymoon in Quebec

When I was thirteen, after my Bar Mitzvah, my mom did as she said she was going to do: she went to work (her first job since a munitions factory at the Brooklyn Pier during the War). She was a keypunch operator for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and would eventually become the supervisor.

Unlike my dad (until he retired), my mom was a social butterfly, enjoying the company of others, with a cackle of a laugh that ran through the Rosen family, that I adored, and eventually inherited. My parents were known for their wild parties, especially on Halloween (I have the old black and white photos to prove it), and heavy drinking was common. They had a rolling bar in the corner of the living room that stayed until my dad moved out, years after my mom passed on. The parties stopped when they found my older brother, then a toddler, under a table with an open bottle of Scotch in his hands. Even so, we often hosted dinners in the living room that were held on a foldable aluminum table that was kept under my parent’s bed.

Halloween party in our living room

To be fair, while my mom had her kitchen specialties, such as being creative with pineapples as crudité, she was not a very good cook, because she simply did not enjoy the process. Meats were overcooked and tough, and veggies were mushy from cans. My brother Richie said, years later, that he first discovered how good steak was in his early twenties when he went to a steakhouse (he is now an excellent cook).

One of the things I loved about Helen was that she was persistent, knew what she wanted and would settle for nothing less. For example, whenever my father bought a new car every four years or so, it came from Helen’s paycheck. She did not care what brand of car it was, letting my dad handle that end, but she insisted that it had to have a vinyl roof. I never figured out why, but it drove Leo crazy. Yet, he complied every time.

Another occurrence she put her foot down was at Passover when I was a young teen. Tradition decried that two (meat and dairy) separate set of dishes needed to be used during the 8-day holiday, so my mother would climb up and take the Passover dishes down from the upper kitchen cabinet and put the two sets of daily dishes in their place. Of course, living in an apartment in Brooklyn meant cockroaches were a natural part of our environment, thereby Helen would have to wash all the Passover dishes, and eight days later, when she switched them back, she would have to wash all the daily dishware. Finally, she had enough. “Leo,” she said sternly, “I’m not doing this anymore. Ganish [enough]!” This led to a multi-day fight that ended with my mother – all five-feet of her – standing her ground and saying, “Fine, you want it done, Leo, you do it!” And he did. That was the last year we switched dishes. 

At World Fair, Flushing, NY, 1965

Helen had some health issues over the years, such as a cigarette being flicked out of a car window in front of us and landing in my mom’s eye. Another time, she fell down the basement stairs and broke her coccyx (tailbone), giving her pain for the rest of her life. She was warned not to have any more kids, but she had me anyway (I am pretty sure I was unexpected).

After a heart attack in one occurrence, and then falling on a subway station platform (or perhaps she was pushed), she was informed that she had a brain aneurysm, and would need an operation that was dangerous to remove it. She went under the knife, and technically the operation was successful, but her brain swelled, and she died three days later at age 54, on June 21, 1981.

Day of my Bar Mitzvah, 1968

I still picture my mom sitting at the kitchen table in the evening after supper dishes were done, smoking a Kent and reading a Harlequin romance novel (she read about one per day, and was part of a collective that exchanged books at work). There is so much I would love to ask her about now, but as kids, we did not realize our parents would not live forever.

Other stories about her and photos can be found in earlier blogs, such as How Mel Brooks Set My Mother on Fire, For My Mom (on her birthday), and some photos of her with my father, Oh How They Danced. Feel free to add your own stories about Helen on the Blog's comments section below.

Space and Time: The Context of Museums and Locations with Holocaust Thoughts

Space and Time: The Context of Museum and Locations with Holocaust Thoughts

 Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2021
Images from the Internet

The way one approaches a space can be affected by its history, and especially time. It can also be warped by our own perceptions of context.

We have all visited museums, a place where objects are taken out of its original space/framework, and placed in an unrelated location where it becomes a collection of objects, often transforming it into something else devoid of meaning. For example, at the British Museum,  there are a number of dead bodies on display, from the “Bog Man” (also known as Lindow Man) to Ancient Egyptian mummies. Museums can be, in fact, cemeteries, but because there is no tomb, no hole in the ground, the meaning of the persons’ life and especially death, becomes trivial for the observer. Their existence transforms into a museum art object rather than the corpse of someone who had a life that was either recognized or not at its time. But more about this later.

In 1993, while my partner was at a conference in Washington, DC., I visited the newly opened Museum of Jewish Heritage – Holocaust Museum. Being the age I am, and that I grew up in a neighborhood with Middle-Class Jews like myself, the Holocaust was not unfamiliar to me: for example, the couple who ran the local grocery store of my childhood had numbers tattooed on their forearms. As I managed my way through the museum, I saw the edicts showcased on the walls, the photos and videos strewn here and there, and felt, honestly, nothing much. It was all so out of context, bright and shiny, soaked in neon lights, and familiar at the same time.

Making my way along the pathway, it took me through a boxcar, one that was used to transport the Jews to the death camps. As soon as my foot hit the bare wooden floor, suddenly everything changed. I was no longer in a museum, but in an actual place. Truthfully, I immediately felt different. The context had changed. No longer was it images posted on a wall, or videos on closed circuit televisions, I was in the place. Frankly, it took me by surprise, how uncomfortable and disoriented I felt about my surroundings. When I crossed to the other side, and stepped back onto the polished linoleum museum floor proper, the feeling instantly vanished. Deep down, I did not understand what happened, or what intergenerational trauma was at the time.

During the Summer of 1998, I had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Krakow, Poland, the buildings of which mostly were untouched by World War II. Charming houses, squares, and parks are for the locals and tourists on which to marvel.

From Krakow, we took bus tours to various destinations, such as a 22-minute ride southeast to the Salt Mines that were, indeed, turned into amazing works of art.

We also went to Auschwitz, the German death camp, which was an hour west of Krakow. I was surprised by how green it had been transformed. Rather than keeping it in the state of mud and dirt that pervaded it while 1.1 million Jews, gays, Gypsies, and political dissidents were systematically killed, the land was full of grass and flowers. I found that odd and almost uncomfortable that they would try to make it peaceful, like it was a living non-sequitur.

During the tour of the camp, some of the buildings were filled with luggage, others with hair, shoes, or eyeglasses, and the like. I noticed at least three bags that had the name “Weiss” on it. In grade school, I had a friend named Joel Weiss who lost much of his family to the camps, and I wondered if any of these belonged to them.

There was a lot of unease, as one might expect in a place like that, but it was more the way the space was projected and described. At one point, we passed a wall that had been used as a backdrop to a firing squad to execute people. Our tour guide, a middle-aged woman, pointed to it and said loud and plain, “Against this wall, they shot the great Polish martyr [his name].” And then in a lower, quick voice as if it were secondary, “And 10,000 Jews.” Going to another building, there was a cell, and she announced, “In this cell, the great Polish poet [his name] was tortured and brutally killed,” and again lower, “…and 30,000 Jews.” I found it quite startling.

Towards the end of the tour, we approached the gas chambers. I stepped inside, and for a few moments, I was the only one in there. It was quite profound for me, looking around this surprisingly large room with non-functioning shower heads and numerous finger scratchings along the walls. This felt incredibly visceral to me, and I had the thought, “If I was here in the 1940s, while I would have been conscious walking in, I would not be aware going through the back door,” which led to the crematorium.

I stepped through that back door and there was a younger couple already ahead of me. The woman was pointing to the oven like Vanna White when she just-turned a letter on “Wheel of Forturn,” with a big grin on her face, while her boyfriend was taking some vacation snapshots. I was appalled, and my partner and I had a long talk about it on the bus ride back to Krakow.

What I have come to realize is that there is a difference between the space in a museum and the actual location where an event happened. A museum tends to be safe, its dangerous material like weaponry or other material of a violent past is removed from context, and it becomes benign, turned into artifacts. That certainly is its goal, I would wonder.

Despite it being before the big Internet boom, that young couple who were taking the vacation photos in the crematoria was separated from that real/museum dichotomy, and did not really comprehend the difference. They had grown up with museums, and for them, this was merely one of them, a site they had probably heard about in class from teachers that were as far removed from reality as the tour guide. That’s part of culture, that the Other is distanced from the every day. There was no connection for them as it was for me, who had also lost family to this death machine. It went beyond mere history books to  a personal, instinctive level for me, but not for them.

Since moving to Saskatchewan, I have wondered if the local First Nations and especially Metis people have that intergenerational trauma experience when they visit Batoche, the site of the Louis Riel Rebellion of 1885, or the stone circles near Eastend left by First Nations peoples who were starved by the North-West Mounted Police. Do the Settler generations react the same as that couple, that it is a story from a book, even though they are in the actual spot where a rebellion occurred? Do the tour guides discuss the brave Canadian soldiers, and blithely mention the genocide that let up to the rebellion?

It is all in the context of the place and how it is approached as either a museum or a location of angst. It is also in the perspective of the person viewing it, and their relationship to the events, if any. In her 2012 book, A Geography of Blood, I believe that author Candace Savage, though of Settler stock, was tuned in enough to the land to realize of what the rock circles were indicative. If I went to Batoche, I am not certain I would feel that, but I would hopefully be more aware of my consciousness and take a check on my own placement in its violent history.

It should be noted that I did take a single picture of myself on the grounds of Auschwitz: on the way out, I stood under the gate sign that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work will set you free). I did this in defiance, to say in my own way, “You didn’t get me, you Nazi bastards!“

 

Kingsborough Community College Memories

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2021
Images from the Internet

Kingsborough Community College Memories

While I started this blog in 2008, the notebook in which it was handwritten was packed up when I moved. Recently I found the first draft, finishing it in June 2021. This is the first time it is being published.

Thanks to my being truant for my Sophomore year at Lafayette High School, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, due to bullying, I was granted a year-long Grade Point Average (GPA) of 47; that was the public school system’s “Scarlet Letter” notification that marked me as truant, as surely as if it were branded on my forehead. Due to this, my overall GPA when I graduated was 73. That is two points lower than most four-year CUNY (City University of New York) and SUNY (State University of New York) schools would accept. Brooklyn College turned me down flat, due to those two points. That is how I ended up attending Kingsborough Community College (KCC).

Campus then

Kingsborough was on the eastern peninsula tip of the same “island” that contained Brighton Beach in the center and Coney Island to the west, in a neighborhood called Oriental Beach (just past Manhattan Beach Park). It was an old military base, and was built as a series of bland barracks that were long, low, and squat buildings. Soon after I started attending the school, they started construction of the beautiful campus it is now. At the time, the parking lot was outside the school campus, about a quarter mile away; now it is on-campus. We were in classes through all the noise and, of course, the formation was completed the end of the semester after I graduated.

While I will not say that KCC was a party school back then, I will admit that drugs and alcohol were rampant, because in 1974, many who ended up in KCC were never expected to go any further in an educational facility. The college was full of early vestiges of the disco “Tony Manero” mentality, prog and what is now known as classic rockers, often wearing tee-shirts with the likes of Yes, Kansas, and especially CSNY, and having a contingent of heavy metal fans (in fact, the first time I heard “Stairway to Heaven” was on a jukebox in their annex cafeteria; I was a folkie, and was not impressed). While I was there, I was getting into Sparks’ Kimono My House, and just started seeing The Ramones and Talking Heads at CBGB in 1975, starting my immersion in the New York “punk” scene.

Towards the end of my freshman semester, I was playing 500 Rummy with the first pal I made there, Hoi Wan John Louis (I called him Louie; though I haven’t seen him since we graduated, we are still Facebook friends). We played the same game for two years and I eventually lost by a couple of thousand by the time the score had reached into the twenty- thousands (somewhere in a box, I still have the scoresheet). Louie and I were talking about how we did not want the space under our photos in the yearbook to be blank when we graduated, as I never got the yearbook in high school; technically, I graduated from a Junior class since I had to repeat my Sophomore year, which also meant no prom and no graduation ceremony; I was not heartbroken, so after some thought, I decided to join the school’s newspaper, The Scepter. It seemed like a good thing to have listed in the book.

On the following Thursday, I walked into The Scepter office, and explained my purpose to write for them to the first person I met, which was to hopefully do some film reviews; again, this is pre-seeing the Ramones, which developed my interest in music substantially. I was ushered into the high office of the Faculty Advisor, English professor John Manbeck. He remained there in that position until 1999, during which my Master’s school mate and good friend Thom Harkins also worked there while he attended KCC, and would go on to write the book, Woodstock FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the Fabled Garden.

When I told Prof. Manbeck that I wanted to write for the paper, he asked in what position was I interested. I jokingly said, “Arts Editor,” knowing I was a novice writer. As soon as I said it, I realized that I was probably overstating my bounds, stepping on someone’s toes. One does not walk into a job and say, “I want my boss’s position.”

But Manbeck said, without missing a beat, “Editorial Board elections are on Tuesday, and we currently have no Arts Editor.” I put my name on the ballot, and after running unopposed, I started off as the head of an entire section of the paper, arguably the most read part; there was no deep political investigative reporting going on, and honestly, in my tenure, it was frowned upon by the administration. I did not realize the commitment it would take yet, nor the doors it would open for me.

This being pre-computers, the articles were placed into cold type. This meant that every line of text was made by huge machines that used melted lead to form it letter-by-letter (luckily, not by us). We received huge yellow proof sheets that we have to correct, and they would only make the revisions for misspellings. The linotypers were not going to retype everything for text changes.

The paper came out every three weeks, and the days before were long, getting ready for publication. We had to cut and paste on blue graph boards to give to the printer. And I learned layout the hard way. If I did something foolish like “tombstone” the headlines (two headlines that were side-by-side, making it confusing to read), Manbeck would correct me, after literally smacking me on the back of the head.

When the boards were all laid out, they were given to the printers, who made negatives, which were used to make metal plates, and then run off on newsprint. It was also this process that was used for issues four through fifteen of my fanzine, FFanzeen, which ran from 1977-’88. Learning how this procedure worked helped me understand how to create a newsprint publication. I used to create FFanzeen by using computer typesetting, which I learned to do myself, and it became a career for me in the late 1970s through late 1980s. Computerized layouts ended my profession, which was fine as it gave me a leg up on learning computer software.

While I was at The Scepter, it gave me the opportunity to see multiple films before they were released, and to see some exciting live performances and plays (such as Yentl with Tovah Feldshuh in the lead, and the one-man show Diversion and Delights with Vincent Price as Oscar Wilde). It also led me to interview the likes of Tom Petty (the article was eventually published in the first issue of FFanzeen), Marcel Marceau, Rod Steiger (promoting WC and Me), Lynyrd Skynyrd (pre-crash), the Mael Brothers (Sparks), Jim Dandy from Black Oak Arkansas, and Lady Flash, who were Barry Manilow’s back-up singers and had a solo album out; my regret is that I was kind of ignorant, and did not realize that the lead, Reparata, was from Reparata and the Delrons, or I would have chose a bunch of different questions. I also met Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Walter Matthau, George Burns, Jack Nietzsche, and Milos Foreman, among others at various screenings.

During my tenure at the paper, I did get into a heated argument with another English professor, whose name I will leave out here. He put together a theater production put on at KCC called The Bite of Irish Laughter. This was scenes from a bunch of Irish plays, such as The Importance of Being Earnest. The problem was most of it was done with the actors reading the scripts while stationary on the KCC stage. This took a lot of the humor away as body language was muted, and the audience was obviously both not prepared having never seen this style before, and seemed uncomfortable in the process. I mentioned this reaction in the review, titled “Readers’” Theater Strikes Out: The Bite of Irish Laughter. Apparently, I was the first to pan a production put on by a KCC professor, and he was not having it. He wrote an editorial (that was published) admonishing me, that I did not understand the process, nor that the audience reaction should be considered when discussing what is on the stage. I published my own editorial in the following issue, answering the complaint step-by-step. I became a bit infamous among the faculty for that. Luckily, I never had him as one of my professors, or I definitely would have failed that class. This taught me, however, to not be swayed by my not liking something that I am expected to enjoy, which I would carry over to FFanzeen, and to this day.

Campus now

Sadly, while I was there, one of my classmates, 22-year-old Kim Jarvis, was murdered on campus between classes by an ex-boyfriend. This made headline news in New York, including a write-up in The New York Times.  She was an English Major, but I knew her best as a DJ on the campus radio station, WKCC. While I did not really know her well, it was a shocking event for the entire campus.

Speaking of WKCC, I applied for a job as a DJ at the station, and the record they wanted me to introduce was a Tower of Power song that I was not familiar with (heck, I had never even heard of them before that), nor had any knowledge of the genre, and because of that I had no spiel to describe it. I stuttered and stammered, and naturally did not get the position. But then again, with the time I was spending at The Scepter, it was already affecting my study time, so it was probably best that happened the way it did.

There were two other campus organizations that I joined. One was a Jewish-based one that was pretty well disorganized, so that lasted less than a semester. The other was an Irish Catholic group, the Newman Club, because I had a mild and short-lived crush on one of the members. There was no future for a connexion as she had a rock-steady relationship with a jock who was a football player. A senior in high school, he was her younger man. But she was in my Sexual Health class, which we students referred to, in short hand, as “the Sex class.” One day she did not show up, so when I arrived at the Newman Club the next day, I said to her, “I missed having “Sex” with you yesterday,” referring to the class with absolutely no innuendo intended, and that’s exactly how she heard it; however, sitting next to her, unbeknownst to me, was that boyfriend. He heard it as literal, and took a lunge at me, held back by the other members (nearly all women). I smartly got the hell out of there. The next class she apologized, but I knew I had to leave the club, which I did.

One of the outcomes of my being a member of both the Newman Club and the Jewish groups is that I started to be hounded by the Jews for Jesus on the campus, believing that because I was in these two organizations, I must be of like mind with them. I was not.  Often while walking across campus, they would stop me and try to pressure me to join, or would leave flyers in my The Scepter mailbox. It came to a conclusion when I was invited to an on-campus showing of a ridiculous and cringy heavy-Christian rip-off of The Exorcist called The Enemy (starring Judith Ivey in her very first film!). Even if I was a believer, it was a really bad film; and I slammed it in my review. Rightfully harshly. They stopped bothering me after that.

Don Imus

I had a Sociology professor who was young and cool, who taught me some things that I still remember now, such as that trends tend to start in the poorer demographics, then get copied by the rich demographic trying to appear “cool,” and then by the Middle Class, who are emulating the rich, with the goal to also fit in.

But her claim to fame was when she brought Don Imus (d. 2019) to perform/talk in the auditorium. It was going to go out over the radio (again, WKCC), so she asked him not to curse because they could lose their licence. Since he was a radio DJ himself, he said he understood and agreed to it. He came onto stage to great applause and a full house. There were two microphones taped together in the center of the stage. As he strode up and said hello, he asked, which one was for the radio. Someone told him, and he leaned over it and said, “Fuck all of you.” He then continued on a long, profanity-filled bit which got a positive reaction from the crowd, but you could see the panic on the faces of the administrators, and especially on the Sociology professor, as Imus was her responsibility. Honestly, I never forgave him for destroying that trust. Luckily, at that time, the range of the radio station was essentially two blocks past the front gates, so it went unheard by the FCC. The professor received a reprimand, but was not fired. She was also subdued for the rest of the class.

Towards the end of my tenure at the paper, I received a service award from the College for my contributions, which included a third of the paper. Even my dust-up with the English professor did not stand in the way. However, my grades had started to slip; because I spent so much time at The Scepter and going to free films and theater, I had less time to study. In my last semester, I cut back my non-scholastic extra-curricular activities. I buckled down, and was placed on the Dean’s List. I graduated from KCC in February 1976.

From there, I went to Queens College; Brooklyn College accepted me, but since they turned me down the first time, now it was my turn to do the same. I graduated Queens in 1979. From 1991 until 1994, while working full time, I went to New York University where I aced a Master’s degree in Media Ecology (media theory). For a guy who was truant in high school and graduated with a 73 GPA, I think I exonerated myself and did pretty well.

Odd Jobs Stories II

Odd Jobs Stories II

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2021
Images from the Internet

Due to the success of my previous work-related stories, I thought I would continue with other work experiences that are either unsettling or joyous.

* * *

1.
For a two-week period during 1983, I worked as a messenger out of the Lincoln Building, which is on 42nd Street, across from Grand Central Train Station. I was between work as a typesetter, and I took it what is now known as a “survival job.”

It was pretty standard work, either picking up packages or dropping them off after getting a signature. I found it kind of mundane, though three of my friends were also messengers around that time, and two of them liked it because it gave them the freedom to be out and about, one did not.

For one of my deliveries, I had to go to the Associated Press office around the corner from the “30 Rock,” the NBC building, right near Rockefeller Plaza’s skating rink. I brought the package, and the person I was delivering it to in a crowded room full of desks (an early “open office” concept, I guess), commented that he could not find his pen. It was right next to him on his desk, and without saying a word, I pointed to it, to help him out.

With extreme condescension (I honestly believe he did not realize the level of it as I remembered it), he said, “Oh, aren’t you a smart one. Maybe we should hire you?” It was solid white male privilege.

All 115 pounds of me leaned into him and said in a clear sotto voce that others could hear (honestly, I was not doing that intentionally, I was just fed up), “Listen, I am doing this job because I have no choice right now. I have a Bachelor’s Degree and cannot find work, so don’t you dare talk to me or anyone else in my position like that, unless you know the person and their story.”

With that, I took the signed package out of his hand, turned around, and walked out without looking back. As I left the building, I was sure that would be my last day because this guy would go full “Karen” and complain to my boss. Honestly, I did not care if that happened, I believed it was worth it to stand up for myself.

Much to the guy’s credit, I did not hear anything from my boss about it, so I am assuming he did not call. Perhaps he learned a lesson, one would hope.

I left the job four days later to work as a temp at PBS Thirteen, where I typed out the proposal for the infamous Aba Eban documentary, “Heritage: Civilization and the Jews.” (1984). I also worked there for two weeks when something permanent came out.

* * *

2.
I learned not to assume about anyone else’s position early on, having had jobs that dealt with the public such as scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins, or an usher and ticket ripper at a local movie palace.

While I was a proofreader, we had a young African-American man who delivered the mail. Whenever he dropped mail on my desk, I said hello, and asked his name. He just glared at me and walked on. But I am persistent.

Going forward, every single time he dropped off mail, I would always say hello and ask his name. Finally, after a while, he got mad, and said, “Why do you want to know?!”

My response was, “I see you every single day, and just like any of my other co-workers, I want to be friendly. I do not just say it to you, I say it to everyone. Also, I used to be a mail clerk at my first office job at 99 Church Street (next to the Woolworth Building), so I understand.” With that he walked off.

The next time he came around, before I could even say anything, he said, “My name is Leroy.” I stood up and shook his hand, and said, “Hello Leroy. Since we have to work together, I hope we can be at least civil.”

I found his reply kind of shocking. He said, “I have worked here for two years, and in that time, not one person has acknowledged me other than to give me something to mail. No one has ever asked my name or said thank you.”

My response, in a quiet voice – and this was not something that would fly today – was “Fuck them. That is their issue. If they are going to be so obnoxious, they don’t deserve to have you say hello. For me, I’m glad to know you.”

From that point on, whenever he came by, he had a big smile on his face (as did I), and we’d briefly chat (he could not stay long because he needed to finish his rounds).

When his birthday came around, I bought a card and had everyone in my Department sign it, other than my boss who thought it was a waste of time. I left there before Leroy’s next birthday, but I hope things went well for him.

* * *

3.
During the Bicentennial, I worked at a Baskin-Robbins that was on Seventh Avenue South, a block away from the infamous Stonewall (post-riot). My pal Dennis, who worked there, got me the interview. That store does not exist anymore. It was there I met infamous tightrope walker Phillippe Petite (story HERE). Other famous people I served included Barbara Walters, Mark Lenard (who played Spock’s father in the original “Star Trek” series; d. 1996), and the infamous porn actor Marc Stevens (“Mr. 10-1/2”; d. 1989), who lived nearby.

While I was there, it was Fleet Week, and sailors from all over the world stopped by, which was pretty exciting. I mentioned it to one of my customers, as I made his cone, and he suggested I greet the Greek sailors with “nafas skata,” which he said was hello.

There are two expressions I can speak in Greek, both of which are profanities. What he suggested I say is translated as “eat shit.” This really pissed me off. I replied, “Why would you do that?! I know what that means!” With his cone in my hand, I took a bite out of it, and told him to get out of the store and never come back (not that I had the power to do that, really). He seemed shocked that I knew it, and walked out embarrassed, but not as much as I would have been if I had listened to him.

At another point, the boss hired two teenyboppers who were the spoiled daughters of the Liquor Store next door. They were incredibly obnoxious and “mean girls.” They kept threatening to get us fired if we did not do their work for them.

One day, I was listening to a live tape of the Ramones I had made when the store was slow. One of the girls (I think they were around 16 years old), without asking, turned my tape, threw it on the counter, and put on a cassette of the Bay City Rollers. I said something like, “Hey, I was listening to that!” She said, “Too bad, now we’re listening to this.”

I had enough of them. I picked up the huge flat knife that was used to cut cakes, and slammed it down on the counter, cutting the wire to the cassette player. “Now we’re listening to nothing.”

I really thought I was going to be fired, but instead, I spliced the wires together so the cassette player worked again, and never heard about it any more. But the two kids never messed with me again.

I left the store later that year when the owner lost the business to his wife in a divorce settlement, and she let everyone go and started the staff from scratch. Not much longer after that, she sold the store and it became a trendy restaurant.

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4.
At a media company, for quite a while I shared a room with three other people that faced 53rd Street, where I could look out the window and see DC Comics who had all this cool merch in their windows, and could also see the David Letterman Theater. I saw him a number of times, and the Eagles of Death Metal played right below us. I took pictures and sent them to the band, and they were snarky about it, accusing me of being a possible sniper. Assholes. Their band is not that great, anyway.

Eventually the management moved us to the Broadway side, into an open office room. We would go in on Thanksgiving and watch the parade go by from the second storey window. That was amazing. And yes, I took pictures.

During the work days when they moved me there, I sat across from one of the sales people, that I really did not like. He thought it was because he was gay and I was homophobic. Nope, the reason was because he would constantly be using the speaker phone, which made it really hard to concentrate on my job. So annoying and rude. I asked him to stop, but he said, “I bring in the money, so suck it up,” essentially.

After my whining enough, they moved me to the other side of the floor facing 7th Avenue, and my view was of Lindy’s Restaurant (since closed; I worked in an office in that building for a few years) and the Sheraton New York Times Square. Eventually, they moved me back into that room that held the three of us, when I left to move out of the city.

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5.
While I worked at a multinational corporation doing PowerPoint slides for presentations in the 1990 to early 2000s, I was the fastest of the bunch. My work may not have been the prettiest, but if there was an intense deadline, I was the one who they came to; I made myself valuable. In a time when most people could do about fifteen slides a day, I could do twenty-five. Remember, this is old school PowerPoint, which was not as simple as it is now. There was one co-worker who was quite slow, and could only do about seven slides a day. Whenever I teamed with her, I did the majority of the work, which was frustrating.

My boss left to be a “preacher’s wife,” which was taking up a lot of her time and of course, his work – which was less pay – came first because he was head of the household. To replace her, they picked the person who was extremely slow, which I did not understand. It made no sense to me.

A few days after she was installed, she called me into her office and read me the riot act over something really miniscule. Honestly, I don’t think I heard much of what she said. My mind was in overdrive, thinking, “Oh, I get it, she’s trying to establish authority. We were co-workers and now she’s a supervisor, so she needs to make it clear she is in charge.” When she finished, rather than getting defensive and angry, I said, “Okay, I won’t do that again.”

After that, we were okay. Other co-workers were put off by it, because I was not the only one she did that with, and I said, “Give her time,” and explained about the whole “new boss” thing.

Within a short time, she became the best boss I had at that job. She stood up for most of us and defended us when consultants were not happy.

She did have one major flaw, though: she absolutely hated gay women. There were a lot of gay men in our group, and she had no problem with them, but she was convinced that the lesbian workers were going to hit on her 50s, overweight self. I felt bad for one of my co-workers, who we bonded over her being a writer and musician, and we are still good friends to this day. The boss did not treat her well, and she did not stay long.

One of the people I helped get a job there was my Academic Advisor for my Master’s program at New York University, Janet Sternberg. She needed the job to pay for her final push towards her doctorate, and this helped her enormously. It was great working with her. She was from Brazil originally, and when she was an undergrad there, she was approached by NASA to be the voice of Portuguese on the “Golden Record” in 1977 for the spaceship Voyager, which was sent into space.

One day we were hanging out at her desk, and she mentioned that she was going to check her voice messages at home. She turned red and became all excited, stating, “There was a message from NASA to let me know that my voice had just passed Pluto!”

You can see Janet and hear her message HERE. 

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6.
One of the problems of working for a Fortune 500 company, and I have been employed at a few, is there is a deep divide between the “grunt” workers (office clerks, administrative assistants, mail clerks, etc.) and the consultants (Ivy Leaguers who could have earned their degree or had their parents “help” them), even with those who claim the corporation to be non-hierarchical. I was an office worker, and the lowest level of consultant was making more than three times a year more than me. One actually had the nerve to tell me that hour by hour, they made less than me. Excuse me, but I never made your starting $140,000 salary, with all my overtime. Not even close. They were not only clueless, but oft times they were oblivious to how privileged they were.

So many times I have held the door to an elevator, or in a hallway because they were behind me, and they would just walk through, like I was the doorman, with no acknowledgement or even a glance. At those points, I would say to their backs, in a loud and minor tone voice, “You’re welcome!” Sometimes they would turn around and apologize, but usually they kept on going.

I understand they worked long hours, but so did I. I was once on a project and was heading home at 10 PM, and got on an elevator with someone I didn’t know. He smiled and said, “Half day?” I thought this was hysterical and told him so, and he said that most times people would get offended.

We really had to step carefully because, as I said, even though the company considered itself non-hierarchical, we generally had to walk on egg shells. An Administrative Assistant I knew quit in frustration because the person she was working for had left an envelope on her chair with a yellow stickie that said, “Please sent to…” and the full address. The mail pickup box was literally in front of her desk. He could have just written the address on it himself, but felt it was below his station. She said to me, “I am his Assistant, not his servant.” She went on to become a nurse.

One time I was working with a young Harvard graduate who was somewhat new to the company. He would walk down the halls singing at the top of his lungs, like no one else mattered. At the time, I was given the information to input on sheets of paper. Sometimes they would do the swirling delete, or “kill” proofreading symbol and put the page at the back to indicate it was not to be used anymore. Well, in this situation, the page had a the “kill” mark but was in the middle of the stack, so I was not sure if it was to be included or not (perhaps someone changed their mind). I said, “Hey, Mark, what’s with this page?”

In an incredibly condescending tone, like he was talking to a 10-year-old, this 25-year-old said to my 40s self, “Oh, that’s a kill symbol. It means take it out.” What went through my mind was, “Y’know, I was editor of my college newspaper before you were swimming in your father’s balls, and you want to tell me what a “kill” symbol is?!” What I said, though, was “thank you, Mark.” And then continued working.

In another project, I was helping out a co-worker. I had agreed to work two hours past my shift until 10 PM to help them out. I was working away, and at about 8 PM, the team leader ordered supper for everyone else on the team – except for me – and he did it on my phone, less than a foot from me.

At 10 PM, I was hungry with all the empty containers around my desk, and I said, “Well, it’s time. Bye.” The team leader said, “But we’re not done.”

“Perhaps, but I am. Bye.” Yes, I was punishing them for their inconsiderate nature. If they would have bought me supper, I would have stayed all night to help them (yeah, I’m a food whore), but I was hungry and they needed a lesson.

The next day, my boss called me into the office to ask why I had left. I said, I had not eaten since lunch and was really hungry, and when they ordered food for themselves and just did not think to included me, like I’m a robot rather than a Robert, I left.” My boss shook his head, called them assholes, and I left his office, never hearing about it again.

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7.
This is more of a lemonade out of lemons story: at this same Fortune 500 company, I was – at some point – a newbie. I had just gone through training, and was assigned to my first project. The consultant gave me a stack of papers, and sat down at a desk next to me, continuing to work while I put together his meeting slides.

At one point, I said to him, “This bullet point starts with “e.g., “and ends with “for example.” That’s redundant. Which one do you want?”

Rather than saying one or the other, he started to scream at me, in the middle of this large room with 50 of my new co-workers that I did not really know yet. “Who are you,” he fumed, “to tell me how to write! You work for me, so you do what I say without question!” At this point he started snapping his fingers in front of my face. “I am your superior. I am more educated than you, so you do what I say! If I put in on the paper, you type it in!” He went on for about five minutes like that, with everyone in the room looking.

When he finished, I put up a finger as if to say, “Hold on.” I called the head of his team, and put it on speaker phone. In a calm voice, without even mentioning this person was there, I said, “Hey, Jack, I have a bullet point here with both an “e.g.,” and “for example.” I stopped there.

His voice came booming out of the speaker phone that everyone in the room could hear, “What idiot wrote that? Don’t they educate anyone anymore?” Remember, this guy had proclaimed that he was more educated than me. Jack continued, “If you know enough to catch it, I’ll trust you to know what to do about it. I’ll talk to my team about it later.”

I hung up the phone, and turned to the yeller and said, calmly, “So, do you want the “etc.” or the “for example”? He stormed out of the room and never spoke to me again during the three weeks I worked with his team. I got a quiet applause from my co-workers, and I was “in” at that point.

On my way home that night, I was thinking about it. “Hmm, he said he was more educated than me. I have a Bachelors. He has an MBA, which is a Masters. This company will pay for my Masters once I’m done with my probation.”

Six months later when my probation ended, I went down to New York University and signed up for a Masters program in Media Ecology, which I achieved, and all I paid was the fees and for the books. My Masters cost me about $2,000. I have that entitled guy to thank for that.

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8.
I have told this story before in a blog about photography:

I worked with someone who stopped talking to me at one point, and I was disturbed, trying to figure out what I had done to offend her. A couple of months later, I inquired with another co-worker with whom we were both friendly: seems the icy treatment was because she thought my taking candid photos (people talking, grabbing food, etc.) at a company Halloween costume function was "creepy." 

The photos we took were put up on the company intranet, and I saw that nearly all the ones she had personally taken were of people standing still with big toothy grins across their faces turned directly to the camera. I find those kinds of shots can be boring and unrealistic: reportage rather than reporting. To me, my photos felt like they had more life and were natural, with no forced smiles. Most people loved them, but not her. 

When I found out the reason for the silent treatment, I felt better, because it was not something I had actually done to her, but rather her interpretation of my actions. I have no power over that, and I just let it go.