Job One
Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go. No summer vacation this year. One day I’m a carefree high school student, the next day I’m one of the mass of laborers working for minimum wage.
I was hired by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. to start as a “cable splicers helper”, the name says it all. The cable splicer was the big cheese and the helper did all the dirty work while attempting to some day BE the big cheese.
I drove my ’35 Plymouth coupe to the assigned location ready for action in my dungarees and engineer boots and went into the boss’s office for assignment.
BUT WAIT – Kid, he says, you’re big enough and ugly enough but you ain’t old enough to be out on the streets of our fair city. City ordinance requires street workers to be at least 18, and you ain’t. (Oh, God, am I fired already?)
So…he says “get your butt on over to 1801 East Fayette St. and report to the ‘mail room.’” I did and I was now a mail clerk. “1801” as it was called by the employees was about a block off Broadway and fairly close to Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was a six story building that housed a big part of C & P’s accounting department.
The mail room was on the fourth floor and we (three or four clerks) were responsible for delivering the mail to all floors, maintaining supplies for the building and, most importantly, sending out telephone bills. This was no mean feat. We operated an “inserting machine,” of which Rube Goldberg would be proud, that put the bills and whatever advertising or informative inserts were used this month into envelopes. This contraption had little belts, chains, wheels, suction cups, blowers and god knows what all to do its magic. We would load separate hoppers with a couple dozen or so of the aforementioned items and press the “go” button and watch the action begin. The first insert would be grabbed and put on the conveyor belt, travel several inches and then be topped by the next insert, until all inserts were together, and then finally they were topped with the bill. Waiting for this was the envelope, which had been opened by a little thrust of air from a blower. The envelope, now filled, swings around in a semi-circle and into the gadget that licks the glue and seals the flap. Lastly, it goes through the Pitney-Bowes stamping machine (postage 5 cents 1st class) and drops into a large mail bag. Whew, tires me out. As you might imagine, this gadget required a lot of maintenance. We clerks could make minor repairs and adjustments, but for the serious stuff we had to call our frequent visitor, the Pitney-Bowes man, known to us as Challie.
Mail was delivered to us twice a day and we in turn sorted and delivered mail to all the offices in the building, picking up the outgoing mail and supply requisitions as we went. There were a lot of young (early 20’s) secretaries on our rounds who thought we were cute, being so young, and they would tease us unmercifully. I suppose today we could sue for “sexual harassment” but we just blushed and moved on.
The supply room was windowless, about 15 by 15 in the basement. We had mostly stationery stuff there. There was a small desk and chair for us to keep our records. “Going to the stock room to fill a requisition” was one of those “primo” jobs that took about ten minutes but you stretched into a half hour or so. Take the elevator to “B”, go into the stock room, shut the door, lock from the inside and sit back in that chair with you feet up on the table, smoke one if you wished, and luxuriate. When you feel you’ve squeezed all the available believable minutes out of the project, you grab the box of #2 pencils and hurriedly take the elevator to the sixth floor, make your delivery and high-tail it back to home base.
Most of the mail clerks stayed less than a year before they were released to the “Plant Department” which was responsible for all the physical operations of the Company. So, I was looking at June of ’57 as the outside date of my mail duties. However, I enlisted in the Air Force Reserves, where I had a choice to be trained as an auto mechanic, cook, or policeman. In keeping with my philosophy of life, I picked the one that seemed it would require the least actual work, policeman. February ’57 I was granted a leave of absence by the phone company so I could spend six months on active duty with the Air force.
Stay tuned.
I was hired by the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. to start as a “cable splicers helper”, the name says it all. The cable splicer was the big cheese and the helper did all the dirty work while attempting to some day BE the big cheese.
I drove my ’35 Plymouth coupe to the assigned location ready for action in my dungarees and engineer boots and went into the boss’s office for assignment.
BUT WAIT – Kid, he says, you’re big enough and ugly enough but you ain’t old enough to be out on the streets of our fair city. City ordinance requires street workers to be at least 18, and you ain’t. (Oh, God, am I fired already?)
So…he says “get your butt on over to 1801 East Fayette St. and report to the ‘mail room.’” I did and I was now a mail clerk. “1801” as it was called by the employees was about a block off Broadway and fairly close to Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was a six story building that housed a big part of C & P’s accounting department.
The mail room was on the fourth floor and we (three or four clerks) were responsible for delivering the mail to all floors, maintaining supplies for the building and, most importantly, sending out telephone bills. This was no mean feat. We operated an “inserting machine,” of which Rube Goldberg would be proud, that put the bills and whatever advertising or informative inserts were used this month into envelopes. This contraption had little belts, chains, wheels, suction cups, blowers and god knows what all to do its magic. We would load separate hoppers with a couple dozen or so of the aforementioned items and press the “go” button and watch the action begin. The first insert would be grabbed and put on the conveyor belt, travel several inches and then be topped by the next insert, until all inserts were together, and then finally they were topped with the bill. Waiting for this was the envelope, which had been opened by a little thrust of air from a blower. The envelope, now filled, swings around in a semi-circle and into the gadget that licks the glue and seals the flap. Lastly, it goes through the Pitney-Bowes stamping machine (postage 5 cents 1st class) and drops into a large mail bag. Whew, tires me out. As you might imagine, this gadget required a lot of maintenance. We clerks could make minor repairs and adjustments, but for the serious stuff we had to call our frequent visitor, the Pitney-Bowes man, known to us as Challie.
Mail was delivered to us twice a day and we in turn sorted and delivered mail to all the offices in the building, picking up the outgoing mail and supply requisitions as we went. There were a lot of young (early 20’s) secretaries on our rounds who thought we were cute, being so young, and they would tease us unmercifully. I suppose today we could sue for “sexual harassment” but we just blushed and moved on.
The supply room was windowless, about 15 by 15 in the basement. We had mostly stationery stuff there. There was a small desk and chair for us to keep our records. “Going to the stock room to fill a requisition” was one of those “primo” jobs that took about ten minutes but you stretched into a half hour or so. Take the elevator to “B”, go into the stock room, shut the door, lock from the inside and sit back in that chair with you feet up on the table, smoke one if you wished, and luxuriate. When you feel you’ve squeezed all the available believable minutes out of the project, you grab the box of #2 pencils and hurriedly take the elevator to the sixth floor, make your delivery and high-tail it back to home base.
Most of the mail clerks stayed less than a year before they were released to the “Plant Department” which was responsible for all the physical operations of the Company. So, I was looking at June of ’57 as the outside date of my mail duties. However, I enlisted in the Air Force Reserves, where I had a choice to be trained as an auto mechanic, cook, or policeman. In keeping with my philosophy of life, I picked the one that seemed it would require the least actual work, policeman. February ’57 I was granted a leave of absence by the phone company so I could spend six months on active duty with the Air force.
Stay tuned.
posted by revsnodgrass | 8:36 AM
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