Your Lifetime Career

3/12/2019

From my first typing class on a manual typewriter, and needing strong tiny fingers (emphasis on strong) until I retired in 2013, I became a secretary.

As a teenager, secretaries were in every office, and probably the world.  In a typing class in high school (electric typewriters), my teacher, Mrs. Orr told us girls that if were going to make our living working as a secretary, then we had to the best.

I listened and learned from this wonderful teacher. Over the years, I have had wonderful jobs, as well as some really bad jobs. In the early 70's sexual harassment was alive and well. And, it seemed to me that women had very few rights. If you became pregnant in the 70's and early 80's, you had exactly 6 weeks maternity leave. If you didn't return at the end of your leave, you lost your job. In those days, it was as simple as that!

When I worked for a title company (worse job ever), I was a typist. We were given the legal description of a piece of land, and you typed in the numbers on paper two. Hard to imagine now. Each day, the supervisor called all of us typists to tell everybody how "well", each typist typed that day. The supervisor then told us how many land descriptions lady "x" or lady "y" did. It didn't matter, if yous land description was hundreds of pages long, the numbers of how much you typed, was in effect a different form of harassment. I remember when the boss came to see me to tell me that I was fired. He told me my work was under par, and that I would never be able to get another job that required typing (boy was he ever wrong). After he left my desk, I then took a pair of scissors, and cut up all the paper tape I had worked on. In my mind, and I was very young, if my typing was not up to company standards, then why should I leave complete paper tapes behind. This won me no points at all! (go figure). 

At an early age, I didn't understand the concept of staying below (not actually sitting below) and try to not call attention yourself.

One boss threw a stapler at me. Another boss, called me on the carpet because the holes in a document weren't in perfect alignment. This man, in order to get my attention, would send a small ball down the hallway. That was my cue to get up and go see him.

All in all, I have had approximately 10 jobs since 1968. My favorite job, and as it turned out to be my last one, was working at Marriott headquarters as a legal secretary. So Mr. Title Company man, put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

While at my desk, one of my attorneys could dictate to me, while I typed. That's pretty good in my book. 

Whenever I took a typing test, I would always have to take the paper out, turn it around and continue to type. At one point in my career, I could type very fast, and was an excellent employee. I had learned to stay low and let the "bullets" fly over my head. A learned skill to be sure.

After my required retirement, I continued to type. I type my blog every day as well as letters and such. Oh, and by the way, this gal can still type super fast

One time, I was given the task of counting out the numbers of something quite small. After getting that number, I was then told to divide that number times "x". Trouble was, that after dividing the numbers the total was never zero. The men in that office, thought it was amusing how much effort I put in to a worthless task. 

I have had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, and when I did get that permission, it was understood that you only had a few minutes to get back to work. Nobody, woman or man, would stand still for this kind of nonsense. But, if you made waves of any kind, you were gone. All totaled, I have have held approximately 10 jobs. I guess that's not too bad, for a career that spanned 45 years.

After retiring, I tried my hand twice as an office helper. Both jobs ended up crashing and burning. My short term memory made it difficult for me, to retain what I was told. After those two failures, I came to the conclusion that it would be better for me to just stay home. And, I'm happy here.

P