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Writer's pictureKristin Lindstrom

Episode 71: From the Pot Into the Fire

In the 1970s and 80s, it wasn’t as easy to move jobs as it is today. You were expected to be in a position for at least two years to prove you weren’t a flibbertigibbet and could hold a job. After suffering at American Gas Association for six years, the time was finally right.

I landed a job as marketing manager for an architectural firm near Dupont Circle. It was owned jointly by an engineering firm in Atlanta and a New York City architectural firm. It’s main assignment at the time I joined was renovating the wast side (I think) of the U.S. Capitol.

I thought it strange that the architects were separated in a different room from the administrators. I quickly learned that there was great animosity between the two groups. Because I had a cubicle on the administrative side, the architects went to great lengths to avoid me.

I found I was persona non grata on the administrative side as well. On my first afternoon on the job, two secretaries came to tell me they would not do any support work for me. That’s because they’d told the boss they wanted him to hire another secretary, not a useless manager like me.

Well, damn, girls, that’s just nasty.

There appeared to be no point in arguing with them. Sooner or later they would have to chip in and help with putting together proposals. Right?

And that was my main job, but I soon discovered that the company was horribly disorganized in the manner in which they prepared a proposal. None of the architects’ experience had been sorted and entered into the computer so you easily could pull those parts relevant to each proposal.

This was doable, if tedious without the help of the secretarial staff, who glared at me every time we passed in the hall. The big problem was that the boss, Derek, had two bad habits (that I knew of). The first was that he waited until the last minute to decide he wanted to put in a proposal for a job. If it was due at 4:00 pm, he’d start on it at 11:00 in the morning of the same day. Chaos ensued.

The second problem was that he was blind to fact that the company often didn’t have the right experience for a particular job and no amount of arguing would change his mind. So two thirds of the jobs we applied for were out of our reach from the get-go.

This company had a lot of experience working in old buildings and restoration. But Derek would insist on applying for jobs to design new retail space or new office buildings, thinking that the experience of the parent companies in New York and Atlanta would weigh in.

It didn’t.

Derek had his own secretary, a nasty bottle blond redneck from West Virginia. It soon became apparent that she was always ugly to the professional women and never to men. If I was in my cubicle, I could tell if she was talking to a man or a woman without even seeing them. Over time, this seemed to get worse.

One day when I was talking to Derek, I brought this up and said this behavior wouldn’t be tolerated at AGA. (Okay, so this was a stretch.) He looked at me and nodded then walked away.

Later one of my few friends, a very gay, gay man slapped his hand over his mouth in horror.

“You didn’t! She’s Derek’s mistress!”

Shit!

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