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28 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “ НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ ”, ЛИПЕНЬ - СЕРПЕНЬ 2020 LABOR DAY TALES My parents figured that at age 16 I was old enough to get a job, so they sent me down the street from their photography st udio to our local Woolworth's Five and Dime store to ask the manager — a friend of theirs — for a cashier job for me. I was embarrased at having to do this, but my parents said that the money would be needed for my college fund. At a dollar an hour, this was what we would call today an aspirational goal. In those days there was also no line of cash registers at the front of the store. Each counter had its own register, and I was assigned to the register at the stationery counter, to assist a middle - aged lady w ho worked trying to put her son through college. In addition to taking people's money and giving them their purchases, I was also requ ired to replenish any empty holes on the counter with the appropriate stock. Mil- dred would sometimes tell me she had awake ned in the middle of the night and remembered that a specific hole was where the No. 5 erasers were supposed to go. In our small town where “everybody knew every- body,” I saw some people come in whom I had never seen before anywhere else. I learned not to l ook shocked or react when seeing a customer who had a disfiguring birthmark that covered half his face, or someone who handed me money for a purchase and was missing some fingers. Such people apparently did not feel comfortable going to other public places but felt brave enough to venture into a five and dime. The other life experience that this job left me with was the hope that I would never have to be like Mildred, working at a dollar an hour in an unairconditioned five and dime store and waking up in th e middle of the night to recall where the No. 5 erasers should be. When my job ended in June of my 17th year, I had amassed the prince ly sum of $1,000, which also included some babysitting jobs. The $1,000 covered my first semester at college. — Natalie Ga wdiak ________________ Back in the 70s and 80s, when everyone still had “land lines” in their homes instead of cell phones, I worked with Bell Telephone (affectionately known as “Ma Bell”) for four summers. This started when I was in high school and conti nued into my first two y ears of college. My job description was “long distance operator,” and I worked with a plug switchboard and headset! Training was pretty intense and included practicing how to be the "Voice with a Smile," which was difficult at times when dealing with nasty (often drunk) people. If a customer was really abusive, we handed him or her off to a supervisor. We were also monitored to see how many calls we could handle at a time; we had 20 sets of plugs in front of us, so masterful multitas king was the goal. We we re also timed on how quickly we handled our interactions with customers, which was sometimes tough, especially with elderly ladies making person - to - person calls just to talk to someone. One thing I learned was that people who say th at the full moon doesn’t affect us are dead wrong! That full - moon phenomenon ALWAYS seemed to happen the night that the local mental fa- cilities and group homes would allow their patients to call home using the old - fashioned coin phones. The call was charg ed per minutes used, and they would always run over the 3 - minute time allotment. Trying to get them back to pay for the additional minutes was difficult, especially because they often just handed the phone to the next caller to use! The Ultimate game of “C atch Up!” – Marianna (Szczawinsky) Crans, Br. 95 ________________ The summer I moved into my very first apartment, I was teaching at an elementary school and taking on odd jobs to supplement the modest salary that covered my rent (a whopping $82 a month b ack then), food, and gas for the car, but that’s about it. So when I saw a sign posted on a telephone pole recruiting drivers to deliver telephone books, I jammed on the brakes. The sign had been posted by the then ubiquitous Bell Telephone Company, affect ionately an d universally known as “Ma Bell.” The job involved delivering white pages (which listed residential users and phone numbers) and yellow pages (which provided names and telephone numbers of businesses, government agencies, religious institutions, restaurant s, schools, etc.) to private homes and apartment buildings. I don’t remember exactly what they paid, but it was enough to entice me to go for it. Step one was to call the number listed on the sign; I was asked if my car had a big trunk. My very used 62 Che vy Impala (bought for $200) had a trunk big enough to hold a refrigerator, a small elephant, and maybe a cow or two, so I was hired on the spot. It was stupid, mindless work but it paid well enough. These days, remembering the job brings a smile to my face , mostly because it sparks interesting conversations with people old enough to remember Ma Bell and telephone books and very dif- ferent, but also interesting, conversations with young millennials who ask, “What’s a telephone book?” – tsc
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