My first job

 

 

Fresh out of university, where I majored in English history and literature, I was hired to write e business newsletters monthly for specific geographic regions. The newsletters were sold by subscription to salesmen who used them as leads.

In those pre-computer days, piles of newspapers piled up on the left side of my desk. I scanned to find news about new commercial construction. It was kinda fun, when I had time, to learn about a school board meeting in Ohio, or a major argument about taxes in Atlanta, Georgia. Mostly, I would research the companies behind the construction, and write up short articles.

In the old fashion meaning of the words cut and paste, cut meant using real scissors. Paste was more like staple each article onto a clean sheet of paper in the order it would appear in the newsletter. From there, I would type clean copy on my IBM Selectric proportional spacing typewriter, trying not to make typos.

Once the paper was removed any typo that I had missed needed to be whited out, the paper reinserted and using the eyelash, a tiny, tiny, filament to help line up where the correct key would go, I would Wite Out the mistake to replace it with the correct letter. 

What a change today with computers where many typos are automatically corrected before the next word appears. Going back to change whole sentences or paragraphs is just a couple of clicks. And then there is the joy of find and replace, which wasn't even in my imagination. Today, this would be all on-line reducing the costs of printing and mailing.

The owner of the company gave me a starting salary of $100 a week. In three months I had a $5 raise and then periodic raised of $5 over the rest of the time I worked for him. I now wonder if he felt guilty at underpaying me, although as an ultra conservative Republican who was pro Vietnam War, etc. I'm not sure how guilty he would have felt. I will say a bit of liberalism crept in when he let the women wear pants as long as they looked business-like. We were never seen by our clients.

There were three other editors doing the same thing. Our newsletters were then printed on the company press and mailed out. There was a strange machine that affixed addresses using metal plates.

Mostly I remember Ruth. She was overweight, didn't care about clothes and shampoo was an occasional object for her to use. And she was wonderful.

But there was Cindy, Barbie and a man whose name I forget. Later Judy came. She was in her 40s, madly in love with her third husband who produced training films (I would work with him in a later incarnation). She wore mini skirts in her 40s and looked great. Never did I think, I would find my soul mate as she had later in life, but I did when I no longer wore mini skirts.

Ruth had a photographic memory and I could say something about Maytag building a new plant and she would recite everything we had reported about Maytag since forever. She knew about opera, musicals, movies, stage plays, books, football, baseball, hockey, history, geography and more in minute detail, a walking encyclopedia. .

Ruth lived with her sister and once a year they would go to England for their two-week vacation. When I made my first trip to London, she gave me a list of not-to-miss places, how to get there by underground and/or by foot in relation to my hotel. Today, if she were still alive, she could replace a search engine on the internet.

When I was pregnant, I was afraid of being fired. The owner didn't like pregnant women, but I kept my job. I left unexpectedly two months before my due date when I ended up in the hospital with the flu. A few months later when my husband left me, the owner hired me back.

The women working admin were a warm, sharing bunch. They gave me a $25 savings bond and a blue baby sweater, booties and hat for my daughter. We knew about each others lives, and I don't remember any back biting or inter office battles.

Before publishing this blog, I checked for my boss's name. I looked up the name of the company but it no longer exists. A few issues are in an archive on line.

I thought about going to law school, so I left to work for a lawyer. I'm glad I did. I saved myself the work of going through law school to do something I wouldn't like. I took some great memories from my first job with me.