A Day at the Office

     The appearance of our Division chief, Glenda Chetwitch, in my tiny office was an unwelcome sight at any time.   It was even more so when I’d just come in that morning, glanced at my calendar to make sure I didn’t have an early appointment and there she stood in the doorway, one hand clutching a file folder.   “You’re looking good today, Glenda,” I said insincerely.   I always tried to greet Glenda with a complement, knowing that she was not used to this and hoping that it might  throw her off balance.   Glenda was not at attractive woman.   She was of average height, with dyed blonde hair, a face like a cauliflower, and a figure that was flat in front and wide below.   Glenda flushed slightly, then holding out the file folder, said, “We have a request for information from State Senator Maxine Peters.   Marcus just called me.  It’s top priority.”   I said to myself:   Here we go.   Another day at the office.     

     I doubt if the ambition of many kids growing up is to spend most of their lives working in an office.   Yet this is what often happens, an example being our oldest  son, who was an accountant..    It’s even more unlikely that anyone envisions a career working in a government agency office.   Yet this too does happen, as evidenced by all those many civil service workers, and it’s what eventually happened to me.   When I was growing up in the Bronx I was a fervent Yankee fan, Yankee Stadium being only 20 minutes away.   My dream was to play baseball for the Yankees.   My ambition was modest.   Knowing that I’d never grow up to be tall, husky and athletic, I didn’t want to become a great hitter like DiMaggio or a great pitcher like Ruffing.   I’d be a relief pitcher, coming into the ninth inning with men on base and, with my well-placed pitches (I had pinpoint control to compensate for my lack of a good fastball) get the final out.

     When I was 13, the earliest age at which I could get a work permit, I had a summer job as a stock and delivery boy in Manhattan’s Garment District.   During summers in high school I hitch-hiked to Idaho and worked in the Forestry Service.   After college and two years in the Army during Korea, I went to work for an ad agency.   For various reasons, I went West to California and got a job with a marketing research firm in San Francisco.   When the firm went under I caught on as a research analyst with the State of California..   As most State offices were in Sacramento, this is where, with Sally, my newly acquired wife, I’d moved and started a family.    I was now, some 25 years later, head of the Health Demographics Section, HDS, consisting of myself and four people, three analysts and a clerk, in the Statistics and Date Division (SADD) of the State’s giant Health Department. 

     The Marcus that Glenda referred to was our Department Director, Marcus Aurelius Gonzales.   When a State Senator like Maxine Peters wanted information of any kind, she of course didn’t contact a lowly State section head, she  (or more likely an aide) called the Department Director, who then called a Division Chief like Glenda, who then came running down to see me with a file folder marked Top Priority.    I looked into the folder.   The State Senator was going to speak at an Oakland high school and wanted information on teenage birth rates for the past ten years..   “Do you think you can get it to her today?” asked Glenda.

     “I’m afraid not,” I said firmly.  “It means running two files and then doing the calculations to get rates and I assume she’d like to have the data by race.”   Maxine Peters was Afro-American.

     “How soon can you get it done?   By tomorrow?”

     “I’ll do my best.”  I hoped I sounded sincere.

     “Marcus will be on me.”

     That was hard to envision.   “I’ll do the job myself,” I said.

     “All right.   Keep me informed.”

     “I will.”   I knew Glenda would be calling me during the day; that was her management style.  

     As soon as Glenda was safely out of the way, I turned on my little transistor radio to get the latest stock market report; in those ancient days, you couldn’t just go to your computer.   Good grief, the Dow Jones was down over 200 points; what was going on?    I put aside the Top Priority file folder.   The State Senator’s information request was important only in our little government bureaucracy world.   This was the real world.   I immediately called my broker.   We discussed the situation and decided this was a buy opportunity.   I put in a couple of orders, for IBM and for Hewlett-Packard.   Just about all the State’s data processing was done on IBM mainframes and the State had begun to buy H-P copiers.

     That done, I called our clerk, Rachel Montoya, into my office.   As soon as she came in, she said, “Sorry I couldn’t alert you that Glenda the Witch was coming; she was past me before I could pick up the phone.”

     “That’s okay, but be on the alert.   Everything else okay?”

     “You have a meeting tomorrow morning, Dr. Sanderson.”

     “Oh, yeah.  How are those tables you’re doing for him?”

     “Almost done.   My spies saw Glenda and her husband huddling together in the cafeteria yesterday.   They might be plotting something.”

     To the surprise of most people who knew her, Glenda was actually married.   Her husband, Harold Chetwitch, was also a Division Manager, in the Department of Mental Health.   They mercifully had no children, possibly because all of their time was spent in scheming to advance their careers.   They were like an early version of Bill and Hillary Clinton.   “Okay, keep your eyes and ears open and keep me informed.”   Rachel was a tiny woman who’d been with the State for years and had all sorts of contacts.   If you wanted to know what was going on, really going on, Rachel was the person to ask.   “Send George in, please.”

     “Right, Chief,” said Rachel, giving me a mock-salute.

     I gave her a look back and leaned back in my chair, waiting for George Rozier, who came in a moment later.   “Sit down, George,” I said, and he did, carefully.   George was big, about six feet tall, and more impressively, about 300 pounds.   He was, I knew from his personnel file, 53 years old and had been with the State for 20 years.   He was a UC Berkeley graduate and had taught college for several years, then there was a blank in his resume before he had his first State job.   George was an irascible fellow and I assume he’d had some kind of personality conflict that ended his teaching career.   He was probably the best statistician in the Department and I always assigned him the toughest jobs.   He’d been stuck as a journeyman analyst because, aside from his weight and rumpled suits and tendency to sweat a lot, he had no social graces, was blunt, loud and antagonized people with what they thought was a superior attitude.    Glenda Chetworth hated him for his boorishness and he despised her for her lack of competence as a researcher.

     “How’s the AIDS project coming along?”  I asked.    AIDS had recently raised its ugly head in the health community and, at the request of Marcus Aurelius Gonzales, I was trying to extract some information on the deaths it had caused from our computer tapes.   Or, I should, say I’d assigned George the task of doing this.   Needless to say, AIDS had no specific identifying code, but the Feds has issued a list of “AIDS-related” diseases and George was working with that.

     “It’s slow,” said George.   “A lot of those old tapes are in bad shape and the fields vary all over the place.”

     “I see.   Well, keep plugging.   Marcus would consider it a feather in his cap if we can give him anything.”   I paused, then I asked, “How’s your wife?”   George, an unlikely candidate as Glenda, was also married.   His wife had also worked for the State, but she was now on disability with some kind of cancer.

     “About the same.”.

     “Well, hang in there.   I’m still working on your promotion.”    Getting George, who, I know, could use the extra money, a promotion was my long-term project.   I’d tried once a couple of years ago and failed, but the State had a new classification called Research Specialist that was at an in-between level, that I thought I could fit George in.

     “I don’t have a chance,” said George.

     “We’ll see,” I said.   I made a mental note to talk to Marcus again the next time I caught him in a good mood.

     The rest of the morning was uneventful and I used it to review my finances.   What, doing personal stuff on State time?    Didn’t I feel guilty about this?   No.   If I still hoped to move George up a notch, I knew my chances of any kind of promotion were zero.   I don’t want to get into a long explanation of this.   Let’s just say that I tried to provide honest data, not fudge it; that I was outspoken (not to the same extent as George); that I was obsequious enough for some department managers and legislative aides.   From the point of view of the managers and aides, I was probably a rebel and a maverick.   At any rate, I was going nowhere.

      I’d learned a few things about work and one of these things, of which management was blissfully unaware, is that people don’t just sit and take what is being done to them, they react in some way.   So how do State employees who know they won’t be promoted react?   I’d seen them do so in various ways.   Of course, one way was to retire early; that is, not to do any work at all.   I knew someone who did a profitable real estate business on the side.   Another guy I knew played in a band at night.   In my own case, I managed my money.  

     It started, I think, when one of Sally’s uncles left her a small inheritance.   With this, I ventured into buying a few conservative stocks, then a couple of mutual funds, then some individual stocks.   When interest rates soared, I had enough money to put into high-grade bonds.   Who could argue with 12 or 13 percent and safety?    In one of the few things the State did for ordinary employees, it had what was known as Deferred Compensation, a kid of 401K, to which it matched your contribution.   I tried to put in the maximum.   I also had the maximum IRA every year.   This reduced my taxes.   It also reduced my take-home income, but the interest from the bonds made up for that.   My goal was to accumulate a quarter of million dollars, in those days a substantial amount, and then retire.   As life would have it, when I reached this goal I had, against all odds, received a promotion and so continued to work for a few more years.   But that’s, as they say, another story.

     I had lunch in the building cafeteria with a friend, Al Cheng, a systems analyst in the Department.   Al was one of those early computer geniuses.   He had also gone as far as he could with the State.   He hated office politics and was happiest constructing or untangling intricate computer programs.   Al was a neighbor and a fellow member of our local swim and tennis club.   We played tennis together after work once or twice a week.   I told Al about my latest stock purchases.   We discussed our respective jobs and our respective bosses, who were, we agreed, complete incompetents.    Al asked if I could get away a little early for tennis.   I said I thought I could; I’d call him.

     About an hour after lunch, one of my analysts, Priscella King, came into my office, somewhat breathlessly telling me about a call she’d just had from a local television station.   “Sit down, Pris,” I told her.   Priss was an attractive girl in her late twenties, far too attractive for a State employee, I thought.   She was bright but a little scatter-brained.   I’d given her the job of handling requests for information from the media.   Surprisingly, we had quite a few.  

     Priss sat and crossed her long, shapely legs, always a highlight of my day.  “So, what do they want?”  I asked.

     The TV station wanted information about kids who drowned.   This wasn’t surprising as there’d been two or three such incidents in recent weeks.   I told Priss where to quickly find the information and said to call the station back.   “Just give me a little memo of what you send them.”   Priss smiled and rustled out.   I thought that if the TV station knew how she looked they’d ask her to come down and give the information in person.

     As soon as Priss left, my phone rang.   “It’s your favorite, Glenda the Witch,” said Rachel.

     “Put her through,” I said.   As I’d expected, Glenda wanted to know if I was getting the birth rate information for State Senator Maxine Peters.   I told her I was working on it.   She was clearly not satisfied with this, but, as she knew almost nothing about data processing, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

     It was time to get out of the office.   I strolled through my little section, asking everyone how they were doing with their various tasks.   I stopped and had a few words with my newest analyst, a young guy named Harvey Weiss, who’d recently come in from another section.   I’d put him to work on a report we put out periodically, the ten leading causes of death in the State.   He said that so far he’d had no problems.   Harvey was engaged to be married soon, he’d told me so, and he’d already asked me about chances of promotion.   He’d told me he was ready to work overtime and would undertake any job I gave me.   He was young and still under the impression that getting promoted in the State had something to do with working hard.   Well, he’d learn soon enough.   I said some encouraging words to Harvey and returned to my office.

     I thought about Harvey.   He was on his way.  First marriage, then the kids, then the house, the lawn, the crabgrass, the mortgage, the repairs, the whole works, then he’d be a State employee for life..   Once we’d settled in Sacramento, I put out a few feelers for jobs in the private sector, but evidently once you became a civil servant you were disqualified from being anything else.   I’m not sure when I passed the point of no return.   It was probably when our youngest son became a teenager.   The State provided a good, if not great, pension.    There was Deferred Comp.   The State health insurance plans were as good as any.   The boys must be put through college, then I wanted to retire.   I’d stay put..   

     I read through the usual memos I’d received that day.   State managers were always sending memos; it gave them some justification for their jobs.   I sent a few memos of my own.   State agencies were also always having meetings.   I checked my calendar; yes, the  meeting with Dr. Sanderson tomorrow.    I called Rachel; the tables for the good doctor were ready.   Good.    I spent a few moments thinking of what I’d do when I retired.   Play tennis every day?   Definitely, no memos and no meetings.

     I called my wife Sally.   She gave me the latest news of our sons and of the state of our aged house.   Our youngest son’s car might need a brake check; they were squealing..   One of  our fences was sagging.   A faucet was leaking.   Not too bad.   My phone rang; it was none other than Marcus Aurelius Gonzales.   He wanted to know how I was coming with that birth rate data for our State Senator.   So Glenda, after she’d called me, had called him.   I told him I was on it and she’d get it in time.   He said that was good.   We chatted a little more; he wanted to know about the AIDS project and I told him we’d have something soon.    When we did, I’d bring up the matter of George Rozier’s promotion.

     After this call, I looked at my watch.   I got the teenage birth rate tables from the desk drawer where I kept computer printouts and other such data for which I knew there’d always be requests.   (It helped to have a friend like Al Cheng in Data Processing to get all those computer printouts).   I looked at the tables; better have Rachel put the data in a graph as well; that way even a State Senator might understand it.   I wrote a short covering memo pointing out the things the Senator should tell her high school audience.   Yes, I could have provided the information right away, but you didn’t want to do this with anyone connected with the Legislature.    The same was true of Department heads and certainly of the Governor’s Office.   This would spoil them.   The next time they’d expect an instantaneous response.   I straightened out my desk, a little, called Al Cheng, then left my office, tossed the tables and memo onto Rachel’s desk, told her to make the graph and to have everything ready for tomorrow morning, then said I was leaving a little early.   Another day at the office.