Blame the Girl

“No matter what I did, it was never enough.” – Gary Chapman

In 1980, the country was in a recession, and a recent graduate with a history degree and no practical skills, like typing, was not a viable candidate for most jobs. Until the consent decree that opened up higher-paying outside jobs to women, the Bell system largely employed women as operators at a much lower pay scale. I was hired to be trained as a telephone installer, then placed as a manager in an installation garage. After I graduated from pole climbing, I was told to report to work the following day.  I would meet my gang of employees and start my job as a Resident Installation Foreman for New Jersey Bell Telephone.

“Fresh meat!” The speaker was about seven feet, hugely muscled, tattooed with a buzz cut.
“Excuse me?” I’d heard him but I hoped he wouldn’t speak to me like that again.
“I said, ‘fresh meat.’ Where you from, baby? You’re new, right?”
I nodded.
“So, which side? Business or residential?”
“Residential.”
”You just get out of pole school or what?”
“Hey, looky, look! It’s our new management hire!” A very spiffy, buff man with slicked back hair and a wide smile was standing at my elbow. ”Howdy, Mary Ellen.”
“Molly.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” the fresh meat guy said. “She’s one of them bitches?”
“Watch your filthy mouth. Halloway. and fuck off!”

The spiffy man extended his freshly manicured hand. Marco Lopez had been a telephone installer for five years. He took some college courses and applied to become an outside foreman just as Ma Bell was being sanctioned for having no women, few blacks or Hispanics in management. Marco had a five-year plan, and I was an unwitting part, the part where he blamed everything that went wrong during the two months he was training me, on me. Guy falls off a ladder, my fault. Female installer kicks a customer, my fault. Guy crashes truck into a wall, me again. Being the youngest child whose sisters frequently blamed, I accepted responsibility for things I had not done ranging in importance from telling the guys about a change in the schedule to knocking the entire town of Nutley out of service. Well, the Nutley thing was sort of my fault. I had a new, clueless installer who was stuck on a pole trying to choose which wire to disengage. Someone (me) had to make an executive decision, so I did and well, Nutley went dark. However, Marco went much further, using me as the fall guy for things I had no knowledge of or participation in. Frequently I overheard him on the garage phone saying, “Moynahan fucked up.”

Marco wore very tight, pastel shirts, a pen protector, and affected a sort of Miami Vice vibe. He was sexist, racist, and ignorant but his spiel was impressive and his ability to lie was awe-inspiring. He called me “Honey” or “Molly, baby” and lectured me as we made an endless loop from the garage to the jobs where the installers were working, to the central office where he made disgusting remarks to the female clerks that worked there, to the diner where he explained his ambition to become a district manager and buy a fiberglass boat and a Corvette.

Technically, he taught me nothing, which came as no surprise to his gang, who claimed he knew shit since he’d barely performed the job before he was promoted. But maybe it wasn’t his fault I was so ignorant. I’d managed to glide through phone school relying on charm, humor, and a certain amount of flirting. My phones never rang but my teachers passed me anyway. I actually had no idea what I was doing. Looking at the schematics of telephones reminded me of my year of algebra when I didn’t learn a single thing. My perception of the job was that you handed out the orders, yelled at the installers and then drove around harassing them. I still didn’t understand what made the phones ring and, in a month, Marco would leave, and I would be the new foreman of his residential gang.

The worst aspect of my job was being continually sexually harassed. The other managers, the men in the central office, male customers, made audible remarks about my body, my age, and possible sexual prowess. Female customers referred to me as Marco’s girlfriend or asked me if I was his wife possibly delivering lunch. When I explained I was shadowing him to become his boss they expressed shock and concern. I didn’t tell them that my salary and benefits would make up for the supposed danger of falling off a pole or electrocution, rabid dogs, and irate customers. Arriving at a house to see whether the installer was nearly finished, I would hear the customer telling the installer, “Your girlfriend’s here.” 

There would be muttering and then the guy would walk outside, clearly embarrassed to have me as a boss and annoyed at the idea of discussing his work with someone so young and ill-informed. And I would be irritated because I wasn’t his girlfriend and if I were I wouldn’t be stalking him in a hideous white Hornet with New Jersey Bell Telephone in huge letters across its side. When I informed the customer how much longer the job might take, he or she would look at the installer for corroboration or, once, this woman laughed hysterically and said, “Honey, you just seem like a lost little girl!”

When I returned home after close to twelve hours of nodding, smiling, and pretending that my colleague’s crude jokes were amusing, after having older union men openly accuse me of sleeping with executives to get my job, after having complete strangers call me a “dyke bitch” when I passed them in the garage, I was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my entire life.  It was physical but mainly mental, being ignored or harassed or challenged or dismissed, each day had a Sisyphean quality in that I didn’t notice any progress, the person I had a decent exchange with one day would turn around and be mean and crude the next. I wanted to do nothing but sit, drink, smoke, and listen to Lou Reed but first I would put on my running clothes and pound out some of the rage I was feeling towards my coworkers. Their hatred for me was impersonal but that didn’t seem to help.

“Most people think you sucked someone’s cock to get here,” Marco said on the second day we rode together.
“There’s a lawsuit. I have a degree from Rutgers.”
“Honey, they don’t give a flying fuck about the lawsuit or your degree. All they see is some bimbo sitting behind a desk, dicking around with their jobs. And I have a degree from the streets.

I wanted to slap him. It turned out the installers didn’t hate me half as much as they hated Marco. I was ignorant, not evil. I was eager to be of help and brought them cold drinks, coffee, and an occasional donut which wasn’t stated in the Bell System Practices but seemed to help when someone was asked to work overtime or I needed a guy to help another guy on a rough job. When one of the men asked me why I dressed like a man I loosened the bun and chose slightly more feminine clothes.

The first morning I had the gang to myself I distributed their work orders and waited for them to leave. But they sat down, lit cigarettes, and began discussing a John Fogarty concert they planned to attend that weekend.

“Can you go to your first job?” I asked, trying to sound firm yet nice.
“No,” Manny said, winking at me.

The minutes passed and I realized the time for some of their first jobs that had been rated a .5 (30 minutes) had already passed. My phone rang and it was Ronnie, the inside foreman. I had only met him once with Marco. He was a very fat, very grumpy guy with a red face.

“Why the fuck are you still there?” he said. ”Have they left for their first job?”
“No. We’re all still here.”
“Give me a fucking break!” Ronnie sounded furious. “Did you tell them to go to work?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say exactly?”
“Can you go to your first job, please?”
“Please? You said, please? Put me on the fucking speaker phone!”
I hit the button.
“Listen up, dumb sons-of-bitch’s, go to your first jobs! Now! Get your lazy ass out of the garage and call me you no-nut bastards! Half-hour lunch and nobody goes home until all the work is done. Call me after every job and don’t you ever pull this shit again!”

They stood up, put out their cigarettes and waved goodbye as they left. At the end of most days, I returned to the garage, locked the door, turned on the radio and cried. I spent my time getting lost, ignoring comments about my looks, answering intrusive questions as to why I was doing a man’s job, driving that stupid Hornet, which was uncomfortable and hot, so the day passed in a blur of personal and professional humiliations.

photo by Jennifer Pallian

 I was sent an installer from business that tied his line hammer to a wire and attempted to throw it across the roof of a mansion in Lodi. The hammer crashed through a skylight and landed in a huge pot of red sauce being made by the mother-in-law of a major mob lawyer. Her husband was also a mob lawyer, and the red sauce had scalded her. Bell System practices explained how to run a wire using a ladder, how to climb a pole, carefully attaching the wire to the masonry or the aluminum siding, nothing that involved line hammers being thrown through skylights. The blame was given to the installer, a mad man named Carlucci who was famous for cutting corners but as his temporary foreman I was implicated. My boss, Ed, called me into his office to inform me that I was lucky that this particular installer was known for using nonapproved methods to improve his production.

“Carlucci’s been suspended for this dumb shit before so you’re lucky. Everyone knows he’s a fucking nut. “
“I’m sorry.”
I could see pity in Ed’s eyes. Pity and exasperation.
“Look, you better accept the fact everything’s getting blamed on you for being a woman and having no experience.”
I nodded.
“You being given a hard time?”
I nodded again. I wasn’t about to cry. Crying was unacceptable.
“Fuck ‘em! Get out there and light a fire under their butts.”

Then something happened that reminded me of how naïve I’d been to think I was prepared for this new life. Two months into running the gang I had started to feel less incompetent when Danny Bauer walked into my office, leaned over my desk, looked down my shirt and said, “Hiya, boss.”
The last time I’d seen him, he was naked in my bed, snorting cocaine off a picture of my parents. We met in installation school.  
“What are you doing here?” I could not meet his look.
“I’m your new installer. Check the transfer papers.”

And sure enough, he was. He was also married with three children. He told me he was single. This removed any sense I had of control. No matter how carefully I poured my drinks into potted plants during meetings or refused to participate in conversations about “tight pussies” or how to keep from “blowing your wad” too quickly, no matter how many times I refused to meet at a strip club or asked the men to stop passing around a Hustler centerfold, I was still an interloper who ruined the old boy’s club. After a month, Danny had a serious argument with a customer about how to run a wire. He used profanity and Ronnie called me and told me to go to the job, apologize to the customer, confiscate his van keys and suspend him from the job. When I arrived at the address, he was sitting on the van’s bumper smoking a cigarette.

“Hey boss, lady! How’s it going?”
“I need your van keys, Danny. And you’re suspended.”
He offered me a cigarette and I accepted. We smoked in silence.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “This is weird.”
”Hey, you gotta do, what you gotta do.” He took off his tool belt and threw it in the van, handed me the keys and saluted.
“You want a ride back to the garage?”
“No thanks.” He looked at me. “Hey, maybe don’t come to work tomorrow.”

The next day there was a wildcat strike of installers across Northern New Jersey. I crossed a line of installers and when I got inside all the other supervisors slammed their doors. I called my mother.

“How can you have caused a strike? What did you do?”
“I had to suspend a guy for swearing at a customer. The union decided it was unjust.” I didn’t tell her the same guy had been in my bed for three days.
“Honey, can you say you’re sorry?”
“Mom, the installer called the lady a ‘dumb cunt.’”
“People in England think cunt’s a funny word.”
“In New Jersey, it’s not funny.”

Ronnie called to tell me to come see him. When I walked in, he spoke without looking up. “We’re letting Bauer off the suspension. I’m telling the gangs you made a mistake. Sorry.”
I sat down in the only other chair. “You ordered me to suspend him.”
“Yeah. This is coming from the top.” He tried to smile but I could see he wasn’t happy about throwing me so hard under the bus.
“Can’t someone else take the blame?”
“Yeah, no. Tough call. Walk it off, Moynahan.”

The next day everyone returned to work.

After six months of running the gang my relationship with the men was nearly civil. It was my coworkers who kept up the hostile, sexist comments. One afternoon, Ed, the district manager, invited the five female hires to meet in his office to discuss how things were going. I was excited about bonding with the other women. I hoped to gain a sense of solidarity and possibly communicate to Ed about the challenges of being a female supervisor. But it turned out the other four college hire women were not suffering as badly as I. Harriet was an openly gay, very overweight woman whose hobby was competitive weight lifting. Kelly was the tallest woman I had ever seen, thick glasses, and no chin. Marlene had gone through the Marines twice and was also very overweight. Lynn could only be described with a phrase Catherine used, unkindly, as “aggressively ugly.”

Ed’s lips quivered as he claimed to be surprised by my situation in a garage with sixty men. He also suggested I was responsible for the harassment. “You need to be professional. Be careful how you dress.”
The other women nodded and looked at me as if I was wearing nothing but a G-string.    
“The men will only respect you if you respect yourself.” Martha said. The other three women nodded.
“This has nothing to do with clothes. This is how I dress every day, and it still happens!”

I was wearing hideous, pleated, dark polyester pants, a button-down oxford shirt and steel-tipped black boots. My face was scrubbed clean of makeup and my hair was pulled back into a tight bun. “Are you saying it’s my fault?”

Ed shrugged. “You’re the only one complaining,” he said, winking at me.
“I can’t help being female,” I said. No one responded. “Maybe I need to wear a bag over my head!”

I was leading a double life and neither one was working. Most of the other employees at New Jersey Bell integrated their work life with their personal lives but I kept mine segregated. I signed up for a twice weekly four-hour acting class at the T. Schreiber Studio on Washington Square in Manhattan. Twice a week I left work and drove home, changing in the car, running to the PATH station, trying to slip out of the skin of an incompetent boss to an aspiring actress.

My New York classmates were either bankrolled by their parents or worked as waiters, bartenders, or drug dealers. No one but me had a “grown-up” job. Each time I walked into the dark theater I felt alien, skeptical, exhausted, and angry. For four hours, I would silence the voices in my head that told me I had fucked up my life and try to find a space to welcome new ideas. Terry Schreiber didn’t waste any time figuring out how to break you down emotionally.

We performed a singing exercise that required you to choose a simple song and sing it loudly while walking like an elephant or a bear, using a cartoon voice, dropping into a low octave, or yelling. After you had warmed up, Terry told you to sit on the edge of the stage and sing in your real voice while he quietly issued directions. I hated my voice and singing. My mother sang and I remembered her voice as pretty. The song she sang was Streets of Laredo with the dying cowboy but I couldn’t remember the words, so I chose another favorite, she loved Ray Charles, You Are My Sunshine.
“Sing to your unborn child, Molly.”
I couldn’t see anyone beyond the stage lights, but the room was full of other acting students. My longing to be someone’s mother was my secret hope. I feared it would never happen since I was a drunk and a fuck up. As I sang, I could feel my heart opening and my voice strengthening, but his next cue nearly made me walk out.
“Sing to your father, Molly.”
My voice faltered, cracked and stopped. “I would never do that.”
“That’s the point.”
“I can’t. He wouldn’t like it.”
“Try. Be brave. Make him listen.”
I put my father in the center of the first row, his silver hair gleaming in the light. His face was shadowed but he was there. I opened my mouth, and this tiny voice emerged. I told him he was my sunshine, my only sunshine, tears streaming down my face. He smiled but then he looked sad and then he stood up and walked away. I faltered.
“Don’t stop!” Terry shouted.
“He’s gone,” I said. I was sobbing.
“Make him come back.”
“I can’t.”
“Try, Molly.”
So I tried. I raised my voice and I put everything into the song until I was hoarse. He didn’t come back.
“That’s the truth.” Terry walked into the light, facing my classmates. He must have known I was preparing to leave because he put his hand on my shoulder. “You just witnessed something perfect and real.”
My fellow students looked sad. I felt embarrassed. I wanted to say something about how it wasn’t normal to sing to your father but then again, what did I know? There were girls whose fathers called them princess, let them dance on their feet and hugged them easily. I had never danced with my father.

“How is the job going?” He never called. It was always my mother. Just like he never answered the phone. I felt shy.
“It’s hard.”
”Your mother said you caused a strike?”
“The installers ringed the garage with their trucks. I had to walk past them all. The next day the inside foreman said I’d made a mistake. He was the one who told me I had to suspend the guy. They blame everything on me.”
“That’s tough,” he said. “You’re doing something very difficult.”
I waited for him to tell me something at home was wrong, my mother had hurt herself and I was needed. It didn’t seem possible he had just called to talk to me.
He didn’t speak for a minute. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I have to make money so no one can ever tell me what to do ever again.”
This time we were both quiet.
“Come home soon. Your mother misses you.”
Do you miss me? I wondered. “I’m taking acting classes in New York. I had to sing You Are My Sunshine to someone.”
”Another student?”
“My teacher made me sing it to you. You walked out. I kept singing but you never came back.”
He sighed. “I’m so sorry, Molly.” He understood.
We were both quiet.
I could tell him I needed help, that I was drinking all the time, that sometimes I went to the edge of places, cliffs and high buildings and longed to go over the edge. But I didn’t.

– Molly Moynahan