Nine To Five

I got my first real job in high school, working on the assembly line for the Sears catalog: sixty-five cents an hour, nearly twice what I’d been getting for baby-sitting. Despite my excitement, I also felt apprehensive. Among the hundreds of workers, I was the only foreign face. It was 1944. A Japanese American, I was only seven months out of an Arizona internment camp. My family was one of thousands interned in early 1942 for “national-security reasons.” (Not one of us was ever found guilty of sabotage or espionage.) Now the war was still going on, but the news from Europe and the Pacific was optimistic. People felt the end was in sight, and victory was assured for our side.

At work, the clickety-clack of printing presses and the oily smell of ink permeated the air. My job was to assemble catalogs, slipping pages into sequence. My co-workers and I wore rubber finger protectors and were cautious of paper cuts.

I worked at a table with nine other girls, all Irish, Italian, or Polish Catholics. They didn’t seem to care that I looked different. Because our work was mindless, we gossiped and joked the entire time. Every Friday morning, at least one of them would talk about the hot date she had that night.

When summer ended, I returned to high school, where I was a misfit. The other students spoke articulately and wore expensive clothes. I missed the joie de vivre of my catalog co-workers, their street smarts and earthiness.

Aiko Uyeki
McKinleyville, California

I’d had it with teaching. I worked with “difficult” kids and was never sure how much I’d accomplished. I wanted a physical job where I could see the fruits of my labor and wouldn’t bring the work home with me.

So I took a job delivering packages. I wore a brown uniform and carried a clipboard. At first I enjoyed the work, especially returning at the end of the day with an empty truck. But then my supervisor began to time me, insisting I drive faster and deliver more packages. I also realized that most of the packages contained junk that people would be better off without. I began to miss teaching, in particular the look on a kid’s face when he or she finally figured out how to divide fractions or walk away from a fight.

One day I delivered several boxes of textbooks to a junior high school. I was standing at the principal’s desk with my clipboard, waiting for him to get off the phone. “Where in God’s name,” he said into the receiver, “am I going to find a certified special-education teacher two months into the school year?”

I gave him his answer.

Dennis Donoghue
Rowley, Massachusetts

In the carnival-like world of Hollywood, I was a set painter. Traditionally this was considered a man’s job, but affirmative action had forced studios to hire more minorities and women.

The work was physically demanding, toxic, and dirty. I ran along scaffolding lugging gallons of paint, covered thousands of square feet in varnish, sanded acres of wood, and marbleized dance floors for Michael Jackson. I hung plaid wallpaper as fast as I could, standing on a ladder surrounded by sweaty men wielding chop saws and drills. When my hair became stiff with lacquer after endless days of spraying, I cut it off.

But the biggest challenge in those early years was sexual politics. One of my bosses joked with me, in front of about twenty leering co-workers, “Which hotel are we going to for lunch, girlie?” The other men would make innuendoes and crass remarks, burping and cussing loudly whenever I was around.

Our first sexual-harassment-awareness meeting was attended by forty angry, confused men afraid for their livelihoods, and one woman: me. I wanted to become invisible. But after that, attitudes began to shift. Pornography disappeared from toolboxes. I was no longer afraid to tell my coworkers when something they did made me feel uncomfortable. Through hard work, humor, and understanding, I earned their respect.

I’ve since learned that new hires are always the brunt of jokes and cruel remarks: a sort of tough guy’s welcome wagon. When I realized this, I felt as if I’d found the key to understanding this strange male universe. It’s unfortunate that most of the jokes they made with me were based on sex and gender, but I think it was the best they could come up with at the time.

Felisa Finn
Santa Monica, California

With a newly minted doctorate in social science, a young daughter to support, and no job prospects, I had to take the first job I was offered: a swing shift at a Brussels-sprouts cannery. I worked 4 P.M. to midnight.

My first night I got motion sickness watching the Brussels sprouts bounce down the conveyor belts, and I barely made it to the bathroom in time. The factory nurse dosed me with Dramamine, and I went back to the line.

Except for a French woman named Dominique and me, the line workers were all Latinas. They spoke only Spanish on the line, while the supervisors, or majordomas, who were white women, spoke only English. My Spanish was very limited, but because my mother had taught choir in a Hispanic elementary school in Texas, I could sing a lot of old, sentimental Mexican songs.

Gringas like Dominique and me had to fill at least nineteen boxes per minute on the line, or we’d be fired. Our Latina friends had to fill twenty-three. Why the double standard? A co-worker explained: “You don’t have as much practice doing things with your hands as we do.” “Except for putting on nail polish, or talking on your princess phones,” another chimed in. They laughed while I puffed up inside with righteous, proletarian anger.

One night during a thunderstorm the power went out, leaving us standing in the dark on the iron gratings by the silent lines. Managers and majordomas herded us upstairs to sit and wait until the power was restored. I don’t know why, but as we waited I started to sing one of my mom’s favorite songs: “Sin ti, no podre vivir jamas, y pensar que nunca mas. . . .”

The hall fell silent. I sang all three tragic verses. After I’d finished, the lights came back on, and my compañeras began clapping; several had tears in their eyes. One told me she hadn’t heard that song since she was a little girl.

Later, on our “lunch” break, Dominique and I took our usual place at the end of the majordomas’ picnic bench, but then a small delegation of line workers came over and firmly escorted me to their table. “Now,” one of them said, “you’re gonna sit with us!”

Mischa B. Adams
Santa Cruz, California

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