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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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. 

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

Odd Jobs Stories

Odd Jobs Stories

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

There are certain events in one’s life, especially with employment, that one will have tales to tell about the work, the boss, the co-workers, and the people one comes in contact with in these situations. I have worked long enough to gather a host of stories.

Previously, I have blogged about working in two different movie theaters, being employed with racist and bullying coworkers, and other odd situations. Here are some random events, in no chronological order.

* * *

As an instructor, I was teaching people how to use computers from a user perspective, with software such as Word, Excel and Social Media in general. The room was the size of an average bedroom with less than 10 computer stations lining the edge of the room. In one particular class, there were three students. Being an inside room, there were no windows.

As one particular morning class was going on, I heard the door open behind me. No one usually enters the room when the door is closed. A big gentleman came in wearing sunglasses dark enough that I could not see his eyes. He closed the door behind him, and turned off the lights. Without windows, it was pitch black. Luckily, I had been there long enough to turn it back on even in complete darkness.

I had recognized the man from a month before, when he had come into the classroom during the afternoon when it was open for job searching. Rather than seeking employment, I saw that he was looking at inappropriate pictures instead. I told him he had to turn it off and leave. Swivelling around in his chair, he asked me, with a smile, “Who’s your favorite porn actress?”

Answering truthfully, I said, “I don’t have one.”

“Yeah, right,” he replied. Again, I insisted he leave, and after a few minutes, he did. I then told my boss about the incident.

This time, I flicked the light switch back on and said, “Excuse me, but I’m teaching a class, you’re going to have to leave, please.”

Very calmly and without a threatening tone, as he sat in one of the empty chairs, he said, “I’m the teacher now.” Even without sounding hostile, his words chilled me, and I could see the three students were unnerved.

Firmly I said, “No, you’re going to have to leave.” It took about 7 to 10 minutes, but he left. As he walked out the door, he took the plastic hand sanitizer that was on a shelf by the door. I didn’t care, I was just happy he was gone. One of the male, middle aged students said, “I’m shaking. I was afraid I was going to have to knock him out.”

I said, “What would that prove? The main thing is he left. If he hadn’t, I would have called the cops.”

While the class settled down, I excused myself, and informed the boss of what had happened.

Before the class was over, the door opened again, and this time it was a police officer.

Apparently, the man in the sunglasses tried to steal a purse in the lobby, was tackled and the police were called. He had heard about what had happened in my room, and asked for details. I told him everything except for one thing. I didn’t need to do that.

When the officer asked if he had stolen anything, one of the students mentioned the hand sanitizer. I wasn’t going to mention it, but the officer said I needed to sign a paper saying such, and the man, who was out on parole, was rearrested for the purse and the sanitizer theft.

Thankfully, I never saw him again.

* * *

At a new job as a typesetter, I was a newbie and still learning the ins and outs of that particular work environment. It was also a year since my last job as a typesetter, so I was definitely in the rusty department.

Almost two weeks in, on January 28, 1986, I heard a commotion in the far end of the room, and went over to see what was going on. The television in the break area was showing a loop of the space shuttle Challenger exploding.

Like everyone else, I was shaken by the news. I went back to my Verityper, and accidently closed a 40-page document I was working on without saving it. It was lost. Software did not automatically save documents like they do now.

It was close to the end of the day. I went to my boss and explained what happened. As a solution, since it was my fault and acknowledged it as so, was to stay and recreate the document without pay, staying as long as it took. He agreed. I worked on it and had it finished at 10 PM, five hours later. Before I left, I put a note on my boss’s desk to let him know it was done, and what time I was leaving. I bought a burger on the way home, as I was starving.

When I came in the next day, I was expecting him to say thank you, and see that I was dedicated enough to admit to my own mistakes, and take extra measures at no cost to the company. With a satisfied smile on my face of a job well done, I walked in the next morning. To my surprise, the first thing the boss did was fire me on the spot.

Funny thing is, I don’t remember what company it was, or on what I was working. Also, I never felt bad about it. I know I did the right thing, and it was the actions of the boss that was at fault, in my opinion.

* * *

While working at a multinational corporation creating PowerPoint slides for presentations, I was in an elite group of a dozen or so that was assigned to teams for the length of a project (a three-week average), rather than doing piecemeal work when needed, as with most of the other 60 workers doing a similar job. Our group was spread out in rooms across the building, while the rest were in one large room.

One of the rooms in which I was assigned was with two other men that was next door to one that had four women. The air conditioner was in their space so they were always freezing – I worked in that room previously, and it felt like the icicles on my fingers hit the keyboard before my digits – and we were damp with sweat in ours. To solve the problem, rather than putting in a new air conditioner in our room, they decided to knock a hole in the wall so we could share the present air conditioning. But…

They figured out it was a load-bearing wall, so they needed to put two horizontal holes two feet deep and six feet across, with a one-foot brace in the middle. Of course, the brace was right where the air conditioner vent was, so the cool air bounced back into the room, and they remained just as cold, as we nearly as hot. But…

One of the odd outcomes of this was that because the air conditioner was somewhat noisy, we could hear a pin drop in their room, and they could not hear us at all. This led to two incidences.

First, there was a deep conversation in that room about their favorite books and authors. Now, this was not Shakespeare or Dostoevsky-level material. Towards the end they were arguing over the merits of Mary Higgins Clark. The conversation concluded with something that made me laugh hysterically. One of them said, to sum it up, “Well, she’s no Jackie Collins!”

The other event, which was more serious, was while I was working with a team on their project. As a couple of them were standing over my computer trying to get the slides right, the conversation on the other side of the wall turned to the topic of their menstruation, the consistency of it, and the amount of flow.

When the consultants left, the administrative assistant who sat outside our door with whom I was friendly came in and asked me, “What the hell is going on in here?” She heard the two consultants talking about how we were, well, let’s just say of lower class.

I did not want that stink on my reputation, so I went to my boss and lodged an informal complaint. The result was that the room next door was broken up and the people in it were all placed in separate rooms. They never forgave me, but to tell you the truth, I did not care.

* * *

One of the last jobs I had as a typesetter, before the position disappeared into the world of computer layouts, was at a factory in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, that made swatches. No, not the watch company, but rather a place that made cloth swatches to show colors and styles for designers and paint stores. My job was to type out the info on the back of the swatch, such as the name of the color (e.g., “Cantaloupe Yellow”), the catalog number, and the name of the company (there were a few). It was tedious, but it was work.

It was not a safe neighborhood at the time, and I had to walk by the infamous Marcy Projects from the Flushing Ave subway station to the factory on Warsoff Place. In fact, the management had a food truck come by at lunch, so the employees would not be wandering around the neighborhood as much.

Across the street was a meat-cutting factory. I have no sense of smell – never did – but I understand the odor was strong. One day, while waiting for the truck so I could buy lunch, I saw a big cardboard box on the sidewalk near the meat plant. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I noticed the box kind of shimmering with small movements.

I wondered if there was an abandoned animal in there, like a puppy or a kitten. So, I went over to see what it was. I opened it, and the box was full – and I mean full – of maggots.

Anyway, while the job was a bit tedious and sweaty (no air conditioning), I was in a separate room from the factory proper where the swatches were produced. There was one other white person than me who typeset, and the entire factory floor was filled with African-Americans, trying to earn a living on minimum wage. The only other white people were the upper management, which had a room overlooking the factory floor where the workers were not allowed. Except me. It was pretty easy to see what was different about me.

I did not like the management. There was definitely a distain for the black workers by them. For example, I waited outside for the food truck at about 11:50, to beat the crowd, who came out when the factory whistle blew. I was casually talking to one of the members of management (if I remember correctly, one of the owners) just outside the door on the sidewalk, who was also waiting. Another worker, who was a person of color, stepped out at 11:55, and this manager screamed at him to get back inside until the siren went off, and then continued talking to me. Again, it was pretty obvious to me why I was allowed out early, but not the other worker. I started planning my escape from the job.

Around that time, people were getting mugged left and right as they either walked around the neighborhood during lunch, or on their way to or from the factory. One day I was talking to an older black gentleman, and jokingly said, “I keep hearing about people getting mugged. How come I haven’t been mugged yet?”

He said, quite seriously, which I was not expecting as I was just kidding around, as I am wont to do, “Well, they see you’re thin and white in this neighborhood, so they’re assuming you have a weapon.”

That scared the bejeezus out of me. Two weeks later, I had another job. Normally I would give two weeks notice, but I was offered the job on a Friday, to start Monday, and I gave my notice right as I was leaving. Considering the attitude of the upper bosses, I did not feel bad doing that; it was the only time I had ever left with not at least two weeks notice.

The building is now a Hassidic yeshiva.

* * *

At one time, I was working in a room with two others who did the same job. As I was on a later shift, I went home at 8 pm. One of the other people in the room left at 5 PM, and the last, E_____, at 9 PM. This latter worker started at this company well before I joined, about 10 years before this incident.

Now, I am good at my job, so I had finished everything I had to do at around 7:45 PM. I took my time going to the washroom, and came back at 7:55, just in time to gather my things, turn off the computer, and go home for the night.

When I walked back into the shared room, with five minutes left to my shift, the 9 PM person angrily said to me, “Where the hell were you?!”

“I was in the bathroom, why?”

“You’ve been gone for 10 minutes! Why did it take you so long?!”

Needless to say, I was taken aback by this and said, “Why does that matter to you? Did you want me to take pictures of my poop to prove it to you? Besides, my work is completed. And you are not my boss.” She turned around in a huff and I walked out the door. By the time I got home, it wasn’t even on my mind.

The next day, a couple of hours after I started working on a new batch of slides that were given to me by my team, I received a call from my boss to come to his office. I walked in with a smile and said, “What’s up?”

He grumpily said to me, “What the hell happened last night?”

It was so far from my thoughts, I asked what he was talking about.

“I got a phone call at home after 8 PM from E_____, saying you yelled at her and accused you of not doing your job.”

Laughing, I told him what happened, explaining that I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore. He was calmed down by my ease, and said, okay, and told me to go back to my desk. He also believed me because I am honest at work. If I make a mistake, I will admit to it and try to fix it, and if someone else helped me or came up with a good idea, I always gave credit. As I walked out, I heard him make a call and say, “E_____, can you come down here, please?”

Two months later, she was let go.

* * *

Working in a large room, my station faced another desk. It was an open concept office, so the wall came up to below shoulder level. Talking to the person facing you was common, that in this case, V_____, who is Puerto Rican, was fun to talk to between typing.

One day she accidently called me Frank. I so understood it. In a brief second, I caught that between having a co-worker with that name and my last name being Francos, I could connect the dots and did not feel a need to force the issue. It was not important, really.

A few seconds later she asked me, “Did I just call you Frank? Oh, I’m so sorry!” I explained that people mistake my name all the time. “I’m also often called by my middle name, Barry.”

The man who was sitting behind her, who was Venezuelan, quickly turned around and said, “Hey! My middle name is Barry, too!”

My joking reply was, “Well, I guess I’ll have to change mine, then.” Rather than laughing, he got furious, which puzzled me, honestly.

“What, we can’t have the same middle name!? You don’t like having the same name as me?!” Wow, this is crazy, I thought. Like I was really going to change my name because of him? And he was known for being a jokester, which also was part of my confusion of his taking my joke as reality. Then he started to physically threaten to take me outside.

V_____ turned around and said something to him in Spanish that was short and pointed. I don’t know what she said, but he spun around and he didn’t bother me again.

He was let go not long after that, after calling a gay co-worker a sexual slur, and threatening to throw him out the window. Scary thing is, when he left the job, he became a cop.

* * *

For a very short time, I worked as a proof-reader for a large corporation in the early 1980s, in a windowless basement office on Lexington Avenue. Man, it was a boring job, most of the time. My general job was to read rows and rows of numbers on one sheet and compare them to numbers on another sheet. By three o’clock, I was ready to nap, and daily had a big cup of tea. I even bought one of those spiral water heaters for my huge cup.

I enjoyed reading the resumes of people who were applying for jobs and were turned down (I had to match the names and addresses on the resumes to those on the envelope with the rejection letter. Most of these requests were unsolicited. I was amazed at some of the unprofessional resumes that were sent to such a Fortune 500 company by college graduates, many from graduate schools. One was written out in red pencil.

One of the things about this job was that I made myself flexible, to keep it interesting. There was a Vydec machine in the middle of the room; it was huge with three screens, used for mass mailings. The screen on one side had the addresses, the screen on the other side had the original letter, and the one in the center showed the two combined. Now it is handled by the Word software as Mail Merge. I taught myself how to use the machine by using the official instructional cassette tapes on a transcription machine with headsets. The speaker/instructor talked very slow and precise. I remember one part of it went, “This is a keyboard. The keyboard is your friend. On the keyboard are a number of keys. On each key is a letter, number, or symbol. When you press on a key, the letter, number, or symbol that appears on the key will be on the screen at the cursor…” I thought, “You need to be typing more than 60 words per minute just to sit down on this thing, so why are they trying to teach me to type?” I turned up the speed of the transcription machine, and got through the three-day course in less than one day.

The other great thing was that there was a Verityper in a corner, and as I knew how to typeset, with both these machines, I would fill in when someone was ill. The people working those machines made more money than I did, but I did not get any extra funds at those times, so the boss was happy. What made me especially joyful was that, after the boss left, I typeset my fanzine, FFanzeen, and saved a ton of money that way, not needing a printshop.

The boss was a wonder, and I do not mean that in a nice way. She treated her workers like they were her servants, rather than employees. This was no surprise, because she would invite people coming to see her into her office, such as sales people or upper management, by saying, “Come on in, said the spider to the fly.” I heard her say this numerous times.

One of the ways she tried to control us is when she needed someone to be between her and the proofreaders. Rather than using one of us, she hired some young thing just out of college named Lisle (short for Elizabeth). Needless to say, we resented her and no one paid her much mind.

One day, at about three in the afternoon, I was having my daily fix of wake-up tea, and Lisle walked by. Under her breath, she murmured, “Boy was in a hallway drinking a glass of tea.” My ears immediately perked up. Patti Smith was not as well known then. I stated, “From the other end of the hallway a rhythm was generating.” She whipped around, shocked that anyone knew the secret of Patti. In unison, we started chanting, “The boy looked at Johnny, Johnny wanted to run…” The boss came out and yelled at us, “This is a place of business! There is no singing in here!” We became close friends for a few years after that, even going to Max’s a few times with her friends and boyfriend at the time, who was in Fred’s Band. Our boss was not happy about it.

She let me go not much longer after that.

* * *

Working for a large corporation at 5 World Trade Center in the mid-1980s, I was hired for two months via an employment agency. It was a large in-house printshop, and I was hired for a particular project. They figured it would take me a month to learn the typesetting equipment, and a month to do the project. They did not know that I already knew the machine, and I handed in the project on the Friday at the end of the first month.

Now I was in a dilemma: I was hired for two months to do this project, but did it in a month. But they hired me for two months… Finally, what I decided to do is just come in on Monday, as the whole thing was not brought up by my boss. There was one other typesetter, who was very hippie-like and sweet, and I knew she was feeling overworked. So, when I came in on that new week, I just started helping her. And then the week after that, and so on. I worked there for two years that way, and finally convinced by boss that it was cheaper to hire me on than to keep paying the exorbitant employment agency fee. He agreed, so I quit on a Friday, much to the chagrin of the agency, and was hired on that Monday. I worked there an additional two-and-a-half years.

One of my co-workers, C____, who was a paste-up person, had kind of a like-hate relationship with me. I liked him, and it was rarely reciprocated. One day we were all sitting around and C____ said a quote from West Side Story by the character, Action. I smiled and said, “Easy, Action,” a line by another character, Cool. I love obscurity, and I thought we would high-five over this, but instead, he got angry at me, like I had stolen something proprietary from him. To this day, I do not understand that attitude. I would have thought it was great if someone had done that to me.

Another time, he was working and softly singing to himself. It was kind of a high-pitched voice that one sometimes uses when doing that sort of thing. In humor, I said, “Is that the Chipmunks version? He was furious and actually chased me around the large room. I hope he found peace.

Sometimes, the upper mucky-mucks would have us do personal stuff. For example, a Vice President requested I do his Christmas Party invite. There were two checked box choices; one was “Ho Ho Ho, I will attend,” and the other was “Bah, humbug, I will not attend.” Clever.

Rather than just doing as I was ordered, I phoned him up – I did not know him other than by name – and said, “If you want to be accurate, it should be “Bah! Humbug! I will not attend.” I took my chances. Luckily, he loved it, and awarded me a gift of a really fancy hand calculator. I was touched. I kept that calculator, still in its box, until literally last month, when I gave it away to a charitable organization for them to sell and raise money.