What I Did One Summer

When I was a kid, finding a job in a small town was not easy. I needed the money for college, so I had to take what I could get. I spent the summer in men’s pants.

The largest employer in town was a trouser factory, and that summer I got a job as a temporary office worker. My duties were to take over the job of whoever was going on vacation for two weeks. It didn’t leave much time for training, but I knew I could fake it—at least for two weeks. Never having used a time clock, it took me several days to learn how to properly punch in and out. That did not bode well, and I knew I was in trouble when the office manager said, “I have my eye on you.” She was a bit cross-eyed, so I didn’t know which eye she meant, but I was forewarned.

After one disastrous week on the copy machine, the office manager banished me to the stock room. The lighting was very dim—as was I---since no one explained how to handle incoming (or was it outgoing?) orders. I was told, however, that I was not allowed to sit down. Order handling was to be done in a standing position.

Undaunted, I gazed at the piles of papers on the desk and remembered the advice of a friend of mine who was a kindergarten teacher: “When you take thirty kids on a field trip, you have to come back to school with thirty kids---not necessarily the same ones, but it has to be thirty!”

So, at the end of the day, the orders were all in envelopes and the desk was clean. I still don’t know if those orders were in corresponding envelopes, but fervently hope that men, whose pants didn’t fit, went on diets. Perhaps there’s one less heart attack out there---one less over-the-pants-belly to my credit.

Only once did I enter the factory proper to deliver an order, and that’s when I saw the workers toiling at their sewing machines. Most of these employees were women. The work was difficult and they were paid by the piece.

It didn’t come as a surprise to me when these seamstresses went on strike, and other factory laborers joined them. I had never experienced a strike, nor had I ever crossed a picket line. When I got to work, I saw people yelling, “Scab! Scab!” at picket line breakers, and I was hesitant to proceed. However, when one of the sewing-machine women saw me, she said, “Don’t worry, girl, we know what you do. You can go ahead. No one wants YOUR job.

Hell, I didn’t want my job, but for the rest of the summer I pretended to do the work of the vacationing staff, and the office manager pretended to keep one of her eyes on me. Shortly, after I quit, the owners sold the factory. I guess they just couldn’t get along without me.

Esther Blumenfeld (“I hold a little fundraiser every day. It’s called going to work.”) Stephen Colbert

From: CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld c. 2006