Eight to Five? It's a Living.

Today's youth have nothing on me, earbuds hanging out their ears, always tuned in to something! My boss wasn't the only one in the Ag. office trying out Dictaphone equipment. Those tapes coming into the secretarial pool ended up on my desk. Jack's tapes always came with the real twangy, cowboy heart-breaker, music stuff playing in the background. He was often eating at the same time he was dictating, by the sounds of it. He'd be talking along, then, "Go back a couple of pages and add this...", he'd say. Allen, a post doc., made "Mission Impossible" tapes. With theme music playing, I'd hear, "Good morning, Mrs. South. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is ...". I knew I was finished when I heard, "Please dispose of this recording in the usual manner!"

It was the late 70's, remember. The Pool typed everything for everyone, including graduate students. Unlike other Ag. college departments whose product involved animals, crops, or bio-chemical labs, our product was whatever could be put on paper.

Dr. Ching was a master of dictation. He provided everything a transcriber might need, even spelling unfamiliar words. But what was an AUM? What did 'ith' (rhymes with eyeth) mean? I needed to understand just enough about the complex model formulas to know how to put on paper what I heard being described on tape. A misplaced symbol, cap or lower case, a line here or there could change everything! I'm talking IBM Selectric symbol element workout, in combination with the regular keyboard characters!

It wasn't unusual to be asked to re-type the same manuscript rough draft five times, all done from hand-written copy, before the final camera-ready copy was prepared. Class work and exams had to be error-free, understandably. A new hire, (could I call her a "Poolie"?) the one who appeared to have been pulled off a bar stool during rush hour and plopped down at a desk in our office, skirt slit to upper thigh, a blouse showing heaving masses yearning to be free, received John's beautifully hand-printed pages to type. When she finished typing, she gave it back to him. He returned it to her, errors marked for correction. Again, she gave him her finished work. He brought it back, this time with new errors circled, ones she had created while trying to correct the others. He made one more attempt. She gave it back to him, saying, "That's good enough!" She had a temper, that one. She beat up the Xerox machine--yes, real kicks and punches, then used her hair brush on it! She also took on a coin operated snack machine! The three-month first evaluation for new hires? Nope, she didn't make that.

Cut-and-paste, correction fluid, gentle scraping with an X-acto knife, were all a means to an end. When a piece of paper got too thick from making corrections, those layers were cut out from the back of the page so it would lay flat again on the copier glass. Everything was two-person proofed, by a reader and a listener following the copy; Everything was proofed by the author and by the typist. Even so, there was that call from our dean. He had counted the line spacing in correspondence sent to him from our office. Where there should have been six lines of spacing, by his count, between the date and the inside address, there appeared only five. He sent the letter back!

The previous dean's focus, in his sometimes unconventional way, had more to do with bridging the gap between counties and college. His secretary, a buxom, older woman, wore ill-fitting bras that earned her a nickname I can't, in good conscience, put into print. It was rumored that the women's restroom wasn't a place to talk shop because she had a habit of hiding in a stall, her legs up out of sight, to listen and report back to her boss. Ah-h-h, we could-a-been in the movie! ("Nine to Five")

Our department was one of the first on campus to have a dedicated word processor, an improvement in some ways but in the time it took to figure out how to get the equipment to do what was needed, I could have typed a document five times on a typewriter. Even with the Linear, I think it was, I still had to hand-draw or copy symbols and notations from the author's notes and paste those into the document by hand. For Extension periodicals, an old Gestetner was still being used. Preparing those stencils was a killer! The odor of the fluid used in those machines was enough to make a person pass out. No one in the Pool liked using that old relic.

You never really know what you are getting after the interview. One young thing looked good on paper and perfectly normal during her meeting with the hiring committee but on her first day, she was almost unrecognizable, hair dyed some awful color and wigged out all over the place, dressed not for the office but maybe a wild party after work? She rearranged her space at the front desk to accommodate a BIG boom-box, first thing. The department head wanted no music and no clutter on any of those front desks--a 'work hard but show no evidence of such on or about your desk area'--kind of guy. Gordon did not ask her to remove the noise maker, immediately. She started out sort of okay first thing in the morning. Then, with a caller on the line we heard, "Huh, I can't hear you!", while turning up the volume during song parts she REALLY liked! Calls came in from people passing in the hallway, asking about our "Disco Dolly". Complaints, ya', we had quite a few and it was curtains, for her. It didn't help that she drove to San Francisco one weekend to be there when the sailors docked, and didn't contact the office until our Monday was almost complete!

One of the Pool's best was a former ballerina but she didn't stay long. She considered herself to be "Executive" material. Our office manager had been in the position awhile, despite her use of vulgar language. She loved to tell dirty jokes in the office. Another, a middle-aged woman and a graduate of a prestigious women's college, burned out as a social worker and ended up in Nevada working as a shill in a local casino.

Perhaps because of her education and social work history, Barb thought it was beneath her to type and work as a secretary. She still maintained that belief but needed work badly enough that she taught herself to type. In our office, she proved to be a top notch editor. Surely faculty realized that a PhD does not a writer make, but it took a little time for them to accept her adamant recitation of rules for proper use of English. Once they embraced her skills for writing and editing, she made them all look real good on paper! On days when she wanted company for lunch, we'd walk to a small eatery a couple of blocks from the office. She was the original, "Have it Your Way" customer, always ordering half a tuna sandwich--exactly half--, cut on the diagonal, bread toasted, and a cup of soup, winter or summer, always a cup of soup. When she returned to her desk after lunch she ate six raw almonds. Just that many. Every day. Before I knew her, she had been married, twice, to the same man, first to have a child, and then, again, to have a second child. She loved being a Mom. For Mother's Day she sent each of them a special music box each year and a card to say thank you, for making her a mother. When her former mate became terminally ill, she took care of him until his death. Everyone has a story...

The Pool changed regularly. The department's faculty mix turned over a few times, giving a different office feel to the operation. Some department heads lasted almost 10 years, others were gone in less time, one lasting not quite six months! The college seemed to be in a reorganization process regularly. During the year-long process of testing for a diagnosis and the first years of learning to live with RA, and other changes in my personal life, it was in part, support from the Pool that kept me going.  My will to overcome adversity and a sense of responsibility played a big part, as well. 

 I had kids to drop off at school and mountains to climb, literally. It was a short distance from my car to my office but some mornings, it took me 20 minutes to walk it. On days when I couldn't lift the receiver of my desk phone, someone in the pool took my calls. When copies were being made on a big, commercial machine in the Extension publication center one floor down, across the breeze-way outside, and into another wing of the building or in the Ag. Library one floor above us, someone always took my to-be-copied file to do with theirs on days when I couldn't make the climb or decent. It was more difficult to have my symptoms go unnoticed while I worked in the front office. As the Pool dynamic changed and I had a private office, my locked door meant I was either wiped out from some drug or treatment given that day but trying to make it through or I needed to work without interruption. Most respected that. Oh, there was one--there's always one--faculty member who would stand at my door, calling my name and knocking, repeatedly, as a child does the minute Mom gets on the phone! The women of the Pool helped me fight the fight in many ways. I did what I could do each day and a little more; They did what I could not.

Amazingly, I missed very little work because of RA but I woke up in bad shape one morning. I had a Master's student thesis to finish. It took me all day. The paper was filled with algebraic equations and modeling formulas. Each time I needed to change from the symbol element and back to the regular keyboard character one, I had to lift the small latch at the top of the ball, pull it all the way back in order to release the element, then reverse the process, engaging the latch until it clicked, to replace it. At this time, I was sleeping with Popsicle sticks taped to each of my fingers so they would at least be extended and not clenched into a tight fist-like ball by morning. On this day, I couldn't open or close that little latch on the element balls but under pressure to meet a deadline, I discovered that I could hold my letter opener, then use it to pry open that little latch without breaking it. I remember this as a painstaking day but a triumphant one. The deadline was met.

"Come, come ye Saints, no toil or labor fear, But with joy wend your way. ... All is well." Hymns, LDS.

In addition to secretarial help from the Pool, I acknowledge those things that sustain me, unseen. It's a part of who I am.