Almost a Woman : A Memoir (9780306821110) by Santiago Esmeralda

Author:Santiago, Esmeralda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Published: 2012-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

My month deadline to get an acting or dancing job came and went, and it was clear that I’d have to find another line of work. I answered a classified ad, and the week before Labor Day I was met at the door of the personnel office of Fisher Scientific by Mr. Kean, who had the characteristic turned-out, shoulders-back, lifted-from-the-hips posture of a former ballet dancer. He asked me to fill out an application, then took me into a small room with a typewriter on a small table. From a shelf by the door, he picked up a kitchen timer, a spiral-bound book, and a sheaf of paper, which he set next to the typewriter.

“We have openings in typing,” he said, “so let’s see how fast you do it.” Mr. Kean watched as I put the paper in the typewriter and lined it up so that the edges were even. He opened the spiral-bound book to a random page, placed it next to the typewriter, set the timer, and said, “Start.”

I typed as fast as I could, but I’d had no practice since the course at Performing Arts and made so many mistakes that when the bell rang, I was ashamed to show Mr. Kean the page.

“I see,” he marked the mistakes in red. “Don’t feel bad,” he assured me, “not everyone was born to type.” He laughed, and that made me feel better. “Let’s see what else we can find for you.” He led me to his desk in a corner of a room full of desks that reminded me of the welfare office. He riffled through a box of three-by-five cards, pulled out a couple, read the notes scribbled on them, then dialed a number. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s a job in the mail room.”

We took a rickety elevator to a room the width and depth of the building. Rectangles of fluorescent light fixtures cast bluish light over everything and everyone. The room was a labyrinth of gray metal desks in rows. Wide aisles divided the purchasing department from international sales from the noisy corner where typists sat, clickety-clacking for eight hours a day broken by two fifteen-minute coffee breaks and a half-hour lunch. At the far corner, in front of a row of dusty windows with a view of rooftops, was the mail room. It wasn’t a room at all, but a section divided by a long table flanked by file cabinets in a horseshoe, with just enough room between them to make a passageway into the work area. Under the windows there were two more tables, and at the end a wooden desk with an armchair. Mr. Kean knocked on the table as if it were a door. A stately blonde woman stood up from behind one of the cabinets where she’d been putting folders away.

“Come in, dear,” she smiled. She had an aristocratic air perfectly appropriate in spite of the setting. Mr. Kean introduced us, and Ilsa Gold interviewed me standing up, even though there were chairs under the tables by the window.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.