The Mills Building at 220 Montgomery.
St. Paul Insurance was on the second floor. Rather than take an elevator, we would walk through the incredibly gorgeous lobby and up the curving staircase, seen below.
Pacific Indemnity (later, Chubb Insurance ) was in the Adam Grant Building.
Nancy did not come in the next day, but swept in the following morning, all aglow as she elaborated on her date - and something else: After more than a decade at Pacific Indemnity, she was quitting. She’d signed on with IBM in LA as a business systems analyst. The news brought Evelyn to tears. Marilyn sat at her desk with her mouth open. Who would replace her?
The Mills Building lobby and curving marble staircase.
I had gotten to like Nancy, loved her librarian look, her brashness, her bad mouth, and her openness about sex; impressed that she could get away with elaborating about her lovers and one-night stands in probably the most conservative of the corporate industries: commercial insurance. Yet were I to mention that I was living with a man (Lynn) - "shacking up" was the slang for that arrangement back then - I'd be fired. Any action, dress or lifestyle not in keeping with the corporate "look" could cost you. For example: I wore my hair up in a quasi-beehive, or in a French knot (see photo in Chapter 7); wearing it loose could put me on notice; another: the company hired a young, blonde Monroe look-alike right out of high-school. One day, she came in wearing black, thigh-high, lace-up boots and a mini-skirt. She got the ax that afternoon.
Nancy took me to lunch, secretly, and told me that over Mr. Zinn
’s objections she’d chosen me to succeed her. She would break the news later to Evelyn and Marilyn. I collected money for her going away gift. After work, I went to The Emporium and had them gift-wrap a one-piece, sleeveless, colorful pants outfit with flared bottoms (it was the late ‘60s). I could see her in LA, swanning around in it at pool parties she’d throw for all her new boyfriends. Everyone signed the prerequisite card which I gave her and the gift at her going away luncheon. Nancy thanked everyone, opened the box, lifted the outfit from the tissue paper and ooohhhed- and ahhhed; then beaming, held it up to her shoulders and swooped up and down the aisles.
Above right bears a close resemblance to her gift. Imagine it sans sleeves and hat.
Nancy’s recommendation that I replace her fell through. A week after she left, Mr. Zinn transferred a young, pear-shaped, and balding Casualty expert Ron Beam, into our department. He apologized, telling me Zinn only wanted him to assist me, which was fine. Though I finally mastered various liability coverages and the rating system, it didn’t hurt to have someone around with more experience. But a week later, Zinn hired twenty-year old Dick Duncan and created a position for him as a supervisor over me and Ron. Still, he had to report to Sanguinetti.
Duncan wore his slick black receding hair combed straight back. Big, clear-plastic framed glasses perched on a snub nose in the middle of his yellowish-grey face. His Robert Hall (rhymes with “cheap”) suits hung on his slight, round-shouldered, 5 foot physique. He did not look well and was either very shy or just plain weird. He would creep up noiselessly to my desk; I’d look up and there he’d be, as sudden as a heart attack. Instead of telling me directly what he wanted done, he’d hand me a memo. Ron and I called him “Little Dickie Duncan.” Soon, we started planning to quit. (Planning to quit involved checking the want-ads, going on interviews during your lunch hour and lining up a job before giving notice.) Decades later, after having once caught a glimpse of Duncan looking in worse shape as he stood on a street corner, I learned he’d died of cancer.
TWO RESIGNATIONS* PHYLLIS REAPPEARS* A SCANDAL* I QUIT * MY FIRST AXING.
Ron Beam gave two week’s notice, then left to become a VP for a small insurance agency. I struggled on, dealing with “LDD.” Then Dick Sanguinetti resigned; he'd been hired by Wells Fargo as head of their insurance department. I was left with no backers in my corner. Strangely, another Dick, Dick M___*, replaced Sanguinetti. Zinn had moved him from Casualty. For the year or two I was with Pacific Indemnity, I had worked for three Dicks; only one of whom was a true dick _ albeit a sick dick. M_____ introduced himself to Marilyn, Evelyn and me, hunching his shoulders, combing his fingers through his dandruffy, thinning hair, a sheepish grin spreading over his Cherubic, apple-cheek face. One morning, just after I arrived, I got a call from Personnel: “Someone you used to work with is here. Her name’s Phyllis. Please come up and show her around. She’s replacing Ron Beam in Casualty.”
Phyllis looked the same: willowy, blond and beautiful; her child was now two; she and Bob had moved to San Francisco. Bob, she told me, couldn’t find a job in LA, so he figured he’s do better here. I had not heard from her since I left LA. She wasn’t the least surprised to see me. Personnel had told her of someone else who’d worked for St. Paul and was now at Pacific Indemnity. I walked her down to the main floor and over to Casualty. Before long, she was spending more time at M______’s desk than her own. M_____, I knew, was married and had a couple of kids.
Ron called and offered me a job at his agency for lots more money. One of his staff was taking a pregnancy leave. He interviewed me in his small office in a narrow, brick building, with windows overlooking Market Street. As he explained my job - small accounts manager, I watched men in shorts, tank tops, and Converse running around and around on the gravel and tar roof of a building across the way th
at housed a sports facility. It struck me as funny and I laughed. Ron stopped talking and said, “I hope you’re not laughing at me!” I told him to turn around and look. “Oh, those. I know. Guys on lunch break. Very distracting at first, but I got used to it. I’m just getting used to this title of V.P,” he confessed, “I’m still a little insecure, so any, you know . . . ” He offered me the job: I would talk to clients who called about changes to their policies; fill out forms and send them to the company they had coverage with, or simply give the underwriter a buzz. Ron said that most of his clients had personal lines coverage, but a few had both commercial and personal. Commercial was across the hall. He showed me my "office" a cubicle, really, right next to another of his account managers, a woman, he explained, who always came in late. I gave two week’s notice at Pacific Indemnity and on a Monday morning, started at Ron’s agency.
In those two weeks, Phyllis continued working her magic on M_____. She came over to my desk one day and told me Dick was leaving his wife of ten years,
"Bob and I separated. We never got married," she explained, "Y'know, honey, he never had a job. I'm tired of supporting that deadbeat."
"Who else knows?"
"Well, just you, hon, please don't tell anyone. We could get fired!"
Watching Phyllis and Dick together, it was pretty obvious. The word got out, but not by me. Women were in an uproar about it. First, me, the Jezebel, breaking up Lynn's marriage and now my friend, Phyllis. Phyllis was axed; I figured she'd have no trouble getting another job; but M_____ was too important to the company to lose. Now, I was certain that Nancy and Sanguinetti had spoken up for me: I'd been with the company more than a year; Lynn, a few months.
Things seemed simple working for Ron, the name of whose agency I can’t remember; and happy to get away from the soap operas at PI. My next door neighbor, Rose, turned out to be a huge, Beatniky red-head. She would blow into the office about ten, munching on a croissant or a messy cheeseburger, juggling it, her oversize purse, and files she’d taken home. Meanwhile, I answered her phone - which rang constantly, and mine, and took her messages, as well. I wasn’t pleased. Ron had told me time and again that he was going to talk to her about coming in late and eating at her desk. He was tired of finding mustard and ketchup on the files. “I really like her,” he said, “she helped me a lot when I got here. She knows more about the agency than I do right now.”
Ron called me into his office a few days later saying that a client complained that I didn’t transfer him to Commercial, but had hung up on him. “He has a huge commercial account with us. He’s in the construction business. God, I hope we don’t lose him.”
“How am I supposed to know who has both personal and commercial accounts? He didn't say-”
-“You have to read their files!”
I’d been doing fine till then: I get a call, go over to the personal accounts files, pull the file, process the request, and that- as they say- was that. It never occurred to me to cross the hall to see if the clients had commercial accounts. I apologized to Ron. He did damage control and things went along smoothly. Rose kept coming in late or not at all and I had to cover for her. One day, she bustled in at noon, juggling a dripping hamburger, her bag, and files, told Ron she could stay only till three. I could hear her talking and laughing on her phone through the partition and it didn’t sound like work. A few days later, and things with Rose unchanged, Ron stopped by my cubicle first thing in the morning and said, “Come into my office.” I sat in front of his desk, watching the men jogging around on the roof: they looked so earnest, so silly.
“You know,” he began, tenuously, “it’s really hard having to let someone go who you really like and feel is a friend.”
“ I know,” I said, thinking of Rose, “Yeah, that’s got to be hard.”
“So, hon, sorry, I told personnel to have your check ready -” he looked at his watch, “You can pick it up when you leave. Good luck, let me know if you need a recommendation letter . . .” I heard his voice trail off as I closed his door behind me. In the hall, I bumped into Rose on her way in with her half-eaten chili dog.
Next Up: CHAPTER 8, Part Two: Another job; another buyout; "secret" affairs; the Bear and the Weasel; closet gays in management; marijuana in the “Dish;” a war protest warning turns ugly . . . read on.
* Name omitted as he may still be among the living.
