CHAPTER 10, Part one: A surreal experience at LAM (Los Angeles Mutual Insurance Company), in the brand new Bank America building.

My kids were in junior high (middle school); RK had decided to ship out once more (he had seaman’s papers as well as a being a longshoreman), so was on a ship sailing along South America’s west coast, due home in a month or so.  We now lived in a Victorian up the hill from my sons’ middle school, in Noe Valley, which the owners had tried to modernize with asbestos siding, fake ceilings, and a partially finished rear deck overlooking the garden.   It seemed like it rained constantly that year.

The imposing Bank of America building.

At eight o’clock one morning, on my way to an underwriting interview for the Los Angeles Mutual Insurance company, I found myself on the 23rd floor of the three-year-old Bank America building.   Walking down a labyrinth of deserted, urine-yellow, carpeted halls, I felt as though I were trapped inside a Kafka novel, or worse, Witold Gombrowitz.   The dark wood doors bore no company names, not even gender distinctions to indicate bathrooms.  I knocked on a door- no answer.  I opened it; angry office-workers glared at me from their IBM Selectrics.

“Is this Los Angeles Mutual-"

“-No!”

On I walked.  I reached a right angle in the hall and ended up in front of yet another unmarked door.  I knocked.  A high-pitched voice said, “Come in!”  I let myself in and crossed a wide expanse of an unfurnished beige-carpeted room and approached a glassed-in, corner office.  A curly-haired blond man about 30 sat behind an old metal desk with his back to the awe-inspiring view of the west side of the City.  He wore a blue, windowpane plaid suit with wide lapels and a floral tie.  In his lap was a white toy poodle.

I had to be in the wrong place.  “Is this Los Angeles Mutual Insurance Company?” I heard myself ask tentatively.

“Yes, it is, honey.  I’m Teddy.”   Teddy stood up and shook my hand, holding his wriggling poodle to his stomach.  “Are you here for the interview for underwriter?”

“Yes,” I said, glancing around.  He gestured me to a chair.  I gave him my resume, and we talked.  Or rather I sat there while he was on the phone making arrangements with kennels to board his poodle when he is in San Francisco, getting the branch office off the ground.  After he hung up, he went on to tell me that they had an office in San Jose, but were closing it once this branch opened.  Some of the people down there would come to SF to work, he explained.   I heard footsteps behind me.  I turned to see a tall, willowy, sandy-haired man wearing aviator glasses and a lime-green stretch-knit, bell-bottom, zip up front leisure suit, leaning against the door frame.

“Oh, dear, meet Jim, my partner,” Teddy said, then added, “Actually, he’s the president, I’m the vice.”  He giggled.  “Well,” he went on, “from what you’ve told me and looking at your resume, we need look no further, do we, Jim? For our property-casualty underwriter?” 

 

“If you say so, I’ll take your word for it.  I’m still new at this,” Jim said, extending a hand; Teddy introduced us.  “Hello dear,”   Jim drawled. 

“So, just show up tomorrow and your boss Werner Gross will be here,” Teddy explained.   “He’s driving up from San Jose.  Oh, and Candy, the secretary, too.  Jim and I have to skedaddle back to LA.  First, let me explain about this dreadful furniture:  It’s rented.”

“My wife and I just got back from Mexico,” Jim put in.  “I have some wonderful ideas for the décor.  Our office will be the envy of everyone on the street in no time!   My hot, little tamale of a secretary, Angie, will help.  She’s has a degree in interior decorating.   So, honey, report to Werner tomorrow and we’ll see you in about a week with brand new office furniture.”

“And bric-a-brac accents!” Teddy added.  “ ‘Bye, dear, I’m sure you’ll love it here.”

My rented, metal desk was in place the next morning, along with one for Werner Gross’s office which was next to Teddy’s and Jim’s.   Werner had a high-backed, black Naugahyde, executive chair.    Across from me was the secretary’s desk.  To my left, and her right, was the file/utility room. Its shear-curtained glass wall and door faced us.  When I got there, a gum-cracking Candy and a sweaty Werner were in this room already unloading boxes and boxes of files and sliding them onto metal shelves the length of the room.

“Get in here, honey, and give us a hand,” Werner growled, leaning over a box.  From where I stood, I could see his huge behind straining the seams of his cheap, polyester brown slacks.  He straightened up and mopped his sweaty, red face, and bald head with a white hanky.  Candy kept on shelving files while snapping her gum.  She was petite with short blond hair and wore very short shorts, a tank top, and sandals.  She was gone within a week.  Couldn’t handle the commute or the weather.  The non-identical twins, Jim and Teddy, hired Patsy, a friend of Jim’s mother’s daughter, just out of typing school-not secretarial school, but typing school.  She was a baby-faced, plump eighteen who wore ‘50s style full-skirted cotton dresses  and cat’s eye glasses with translucent pink rims.   Her face seemed always red from embarrassment.  It took her forever to type one letter, sighing and swearing under her breath as she back-spaced to utilize the “correct-tape” function.   Huge sweat stains grew under her armpits.

Before Candy left, Werner called us into his office .  He was standing at his window looking West and motioned us to his side.  He put his arms around our shoulders, and said, “Look out there, gals.  From here, we can see way past those islands almost to Hawaii.   We’re going to write every piece of property down there.  Los Angeles Mutual will take 'Frisco by storm!”

View looking North. Transamerica Pyramid in foreground.

Insurance agents came by with files of risks they wanted Werner and me to look at, approve, and write insurance policies for.  They’d walk around, inspecting everything, commenting on the gorgeous view.  I assured them that we were getting new furniture in keeping with occupying a huge corner space on the 23^rd floor. 

A week later, Teddy and Jim dropped in with Angie.  She was a petite, feisty Latina who reminded me of Rita Moreno.  She wore a low-cut, sheer white blouse tucked into a pencil-thin black skirt, and glasses with heavy black frames.  Her thick black hair was piled on her head.  She swept around the main room, the offices, and file room on Jim’s arm, leaving holes in the carpet from her three inch spike heels, talking so fast in heavily accented English, I could hardly understand her.   Jim, Teddy, and Werner smiled and nodded,  “Yes, doll,”  and “You’re absolutely right, doll.” 

 “Jes, jes, the furniture we order,"  Angie said, turning to Patsy and me, "eess goink to look beyoootiful in here with these jello carpets, hah?”

“Yes, girls, Werner,” Jim agreed, “It’s being delivered tomorrow and they’ll take these awful metal contraptions and chairs away.  Poof!  Never see them again.”

As promised, our new desks, chairs, side tables, and utility table for the entry way, were delivered the next day.   Teddy, Jim, Angie and Werner oversaw its installation.  The desks were of cheap pine stained dark and designed to look like Mexican refectory furniture.
  Our typing chairs were upholstered with gold, crushed velvet. A huge, black leather, executive recliner replaced Werner’s rental chair.   The rectangular utility table for the entry way was of the same construction and design, as were the occasional tables, and credenza and hutch which would serve as a liquor cabinet.   How on earth could Angie, a Latina with a degree in interior decorating (if Jim was to be believed), be proud of having selected this furniture meant for an office?  She had to be kidding, right?  I couldn’t tell.  She swanned around, cooing, running her hands over everything.  Jim placed a cardboard box on the refectory table, opened it  and pulled out ceramic sculptures of Mexican village churches, and stereotype peons- sombreros, cacti, donkeys, and wrought- iron sconces. 


 He and Angie placed them on the tables and hung the sconces on the walls.  Then they stood in the middle of the floor and beamed.   Werner opened the door of the credenza, and pulled out a bottle of Bristol Irish Cream, poured it in paper cups, and handed them to us  Patsy and I, following their lead, raised our cups in a toast.  Everything about the place felt wrong.

Next up:  Chapter 10, Part Two:  Desks fall apart; open House; Werner talks about his girlfriend: TMI!  I refuse an archaic forms processing method.

Chapter 9, Part Four: My Own “Office;” Ruth Gordon and the Yellow Dress; Hallways: Off-limits to Bikes.

After being a constant presence in his office, Parker now seemed never to be there; when he was, he appeared to be daydreaming.  He came in late (later than I did).  He would walk past my desk trailing an almost imperceptible effluence of alcohol that Alan, a co-worker, alerted me to.  Alan from Alabama had a slight Southern accent, a soft-spoken guy- tall and lanky, with limp, longish blonde hair.  He was a senior underwriter and an assistant vice-president.  I'd never seen him in a suit or a suit jacket over his white dress shirt and tie, and khaki slacks.  His office was two down from Parker’s.  The guy in the one between his and Parker's quit after I’d been there only a couple of months.  It stood vacant for more than a week.  Parker hadn’t decided to hire anyone to replace him.  These offices were no more than roofless glass cubicles (See illus. below) set at right-angles to the back wall, with glass fronts and thick glass doors, that seemed always to be open.  

             “Why don’t you move into the vacant office?”  Alan said, turning to me from the side chair beside my desk.  “You deserve it.  You’re a senior underwriter.  You shouldn’t have to sit in the middle of the floor, right in everyone’s path-
            "-And being mistaken for a receptionist."
            "Parker can see you every minute of the day.”

            “When he’s here.”

            “Well, there’s that.  But that’s not the point.”  He paused, then brightened, “Hey, he’s not in today, so, come on.  I’ll help you move.”  So that afternoon, Alan and I packed up my desk, piled files, my in-and-out box and other stuff on a chair and in a couple of trips, wheeled it all into the vacant office.   Parker was not pleased when he showed up the next day.  Standing just inside my door, he growled,

            “How could you just take it upon yourself to move without consulting me?”  Alan, who happened to be going over an account with me, said, 

            “R-, listen.   Agents and brokers come in, they see an empty office right next to yours,” he reasoned, “it’s not conducive for business, makes it seem like the Company is not doing well.”

            “Well, we’ll see how it works out, then,”  R-said, eyes red and bleary.  He flopped down behind his desk and lit a cigarette.

            Inane Muzak constantly warbled through the PA.   On one very slow summer day, Parker hadn't shown up, Alan and I were chatting in my office when “Top Hat” came on.   He jumped up on a chair and started singing, then leaped on my desk and did a few tap steps in a clear space.  I sang along with him.   Co-workers passed by, glanced at us, then walked on. 

Astaire & Rogers in "Top Hat."

   Lisa (I think that was her name), a woman with a slight frame and long, brown hair, peered in the door and laughed.  She was wearing a soft yellow, scoop-neck, dress with ¾ length-sleeves and a swing skirt that hit her just below the knee. 

            “What do you guys think you’re doing?”

            “What does it look like, honey?”  Alan said, jumping down from my desk, “We’re putting some life into our boring old jobs.   I mean, how can you hear “Top Hat” and not dance?”   He started to take her around the waist, but giggling, she twirled away. 

           “Man,” Lisa said, going to her office, “they could at least play something groovy:  Beatles, or   Carole King, anyway.”

          “Earth, Wind and Fire,” I called after her, adding, “Hey! I really like that dress.”

 The next day, she told me she’d gotten another job.  This was her last day.  She handed me a box and told me not to open it until I got home. 

            “You know,” she said, “You and Alan made coming to work fun.  I hope there’ll be someone like you guys at my new job.  In fact, I hope you won’t feel insulted, but you remind me of Ruth Gordon.”

          “Insulted?  No.  Thanks.  She’s one of my favorite actresses.”

Ruth Gordon

 I opened the box when I got home; inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was the yellow dress.  It was kind of weird, I thought, because she hadn’t had it cleaned.  I held it up and looked at it.  It smelled slightly of underarm deodorant and perspiration and had some small holes in the fabric near the hem.   When I got it back from the cleaners, I tried it on.  It fit perfectly.  The color brought out my summer tan.  I disguised the tiny holes with an orange sunburst tie-dye patterns.  It ended up being one of my favorites.

“I can’t believe it’s the same dress!”  Alan said when I wore it to work. “It looks beautiful.  I love the tie-dye.  Perfect.”  I didn’t tell him about the holes. 

The papers were full of news about Daniel Ellsberg leaking the truth about Vietnam to the New York Times.  The documents were dubbed “The Pentagon Papers.”  People wondered if this prompted military veterans to admit to US atrocities in Vietnam.  Earlier that year, Calley had been tried and convicted for the My Lai massacre, and Charles Manson and his evil minions were sentenced to death after one of the longest trials in California history.  The only people I could talk to about these things in the office were Alan, and Lisa, before she quit.  I overheard someone in the coffee room say that Ellsberg was a traitor and should be executed for treason.   And whenever I brought up the Black Panthers, someone would remark, “I’m ready for ‘em.”  When I'd ask how, they'd never elaborate.   Lisa and I wondered what kind of hold a guy like Manson had over women.  “Creepy!”  We were glad that he and his “harem” got their due.
 

Daniel Ellberg

 Towards the end of summer, business picked up as usual and we were asked to work overtime.  One evening, Alan peaked in.

          “Aren’t you going home? It’s almost 6.”

          “I just want to finish a few things,” I said, “I don’t want to have to face them tomorrow.  It’s quiet.  The phones aren’t ringing.  I can get a lot done.” 

 I lost track of time;  I reached a stopping point.  The office seemed eerily quiet.  Muzak had shut down. The janitors were going around emptying waste baskets and turning off lights.   I gathered up my bag, pulled on my coat and went into the supply room for my bike.  I started to wheel my bike down the deserted hall for the quarter of a mile that separated me from the elevators.  I stopped, listened, looked around, climbed on my bike and rode the distance.  I chuckled to myself.  I felt I was doing something wrong, but what law was there that said you couldn’t ride a bike down an empty hall in a place that had closed for the night?  There was absolutely no one there.

But someone had ratted on me.

Parker called me into his office the next morning and started ranting away about me jeopardizing Yosemite’s liability . 

    “What if you hit someone?”  I tried to protest, explain that there was no one around to hit.

He countered with, “What if YOU got hurt?”  

       “How?  I only rode a few feet.   I’ve been riding for years.”

       “I don’t want to hear it!  I’m revoking your privilege of stowing your bike in the supply room.  You’ll have to take your chances outside.”

      Who had seen me?  Alan hadn't a clue.  Verne had left hours before I did.  A janitor?  But why?    Oh, well, I had other things to think about.  Parker had confirmed a rumor that the company was moving the SF branch to its corporate headquarters in Evansville, Indiana.  He assured us that if we wanted to relocate, we would retain our current positions.   I didn't want to leave the City for Evansville.   One of the questions on insurance industry applications was: Are you willing to relocate?  One Human Resources interviewer had advised me that it would be to my advantage to mark it, “Yes”, ensuring promotions and raises.  She hinted that I could always change my mind.  I never took the bait.  I had left San Francisco once and didn’t want to think about leaving it again.  We had a couple of months to find another job.  Alan was moving back to Alabama.  His ailing mom was dying.

        “But, darling,” he said, “I’ll be back when, well, you know . . .” 

Next: Chapter 10, Part One.   The Surreal Los Angeles Mutual Insurance Company:  Werner Gross, my  Bosses, Mexican Décor, and Orange Velvet Poof Chairs.

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Chapter 9, Part Three: The Dark Arts (I Am Invisible), Hot Pants, Short-shorts? Agencies: Yes, Companies: No;

Madame (Helene) Blavatsky

For some time, I’d been intrigued by the practice of astrology, metaphysics and psychic healing so read books by and about  Madame Blavatsky, Tibetan Yogis, Indian gurus, Dane Rudhyar, and Carl Jung.    Wherever I was working, when I’d gotten all my work done, and during slow times, I did horoscopes for co-workers and friends, hiding my charts and books in a bottom drawer of my desk, behind a box of tampons.

Carl Jung

 I liked the metaphysical notion that one’s mind creates one’s physical reality.  I had been practicing Tibetan meditation for a few years and got to where I could see colored auras around people- auras that were created not by staring at a color then seeing its compliment by looking obliquely from the subject.  The first time this happened, I was washing my hands in a white-tiled bathroom at work.   An older Russian woman, who had been a child when she and her parents suffered through the revolution that ousted Nicolas and Alexandra, was talking to someone and waving her hands.  I glanced at her and was stunned and excited to see yellow and electric- blue flares leaping from the tips of her fingers.   As soon as I was aware of what was happening, the flares disappeared.  From then on, I witnessed this phenomenon only occasionally, often when I least expected.   And I would see colored rectangles shoot out of people's heads or ovals hovering directly above them, which always shocked me.  What interested me the most, though, was the belief that if you meditated on becoming invisible, you could attain that state.  I meditated during my lunch hour, lying on the grass in St. Mary’s Square Park. 

Aura surrounding the body.

One day, when I was working at the gluing instructor's agency, a friend called to invite me for lunch in North Beach.  I told him that it would take much longer than our allotted forty-five minutes.  He assured me that he’d get me back in time, which I didn’t think possible.   So I closed my eyes and saw myself becoming invisible, then  walked away from my desk.   A couple of hours later, I was back.  The office hummed along, people went to and fro carrying files, making and answering calls.  K-, who sat behind me, said, “Hey!  You haven’t gone to lunch yet, it’s after 2.”   “It’s okay,” I said, “I’m not hungry.   I’ll get something at coffee break.”   Not sure how often I could pull invisibility off,  I never tried it again at work.

War protesters in DC

AND THE WAR DRAGS ON:

 "In retaliation for the Laos decision" to back thousands of South Vietnamese troops into Laos with U. S. air support, the Weather Undrground exploded a bomb in the Capital men's room.  On November 11, 1971, Nixon begins his "Vietnamization" withdrawal program and 188,300 US soldiers leave the country.

Soldiers in Vietnam 1971

SHORT-SHORTS or HOT PANTS

A new fashion attributed to Mary Quant of London, and other London fashionistas was evolving: hot pants or short-shorts.  We showed up in corporate offices in hot pants over tights, with boots, a blouse or sweater, and wore them everywhere.   I felt they were not that far removed from mini-skirts which were also seen on women in the workplace.   I made myself a pair from beige, wide-wale corduroy and wore them with black tights, flats, and a black turtleneck.  They made bike riding really comfortable.   In the office, I was relieved when no one said a word or looked at me weird.  “Dina” said that I was brave to wear such an outfit in the office.  She muttered, “I wish I could get away with it.”  I knew what she meant and my heart went out to her.  And I realized that I couldn’t possibly show up at an insurance company in them.   Agencies, I discovered, were a lot more liberal with their dress code. 

Airline "stewardess" uniforms 1970s

 Still, I preferred insurance companies over small agencies.  At an agency, as an account rep, you worked through the agency’s special agent with clients and insurance companies, trying to give both what they wanted.  One of my clients’ was an elderly woman who had taken over her dead husband’s winery.   In personal-lines, I took care of her home and auto coverages.   I looked through the file, which, along with policies, also contained correspondence between her husband, herself, and the special agent who had brought us the business.  He had been servicing the account for decades.  Their correspondence was friendly and chatty; he’d sent her heartfelt condolences when her husband died.   Then the special agent retired; he was replaced by a young, inexperienced guy.  From then on, the communication was cold, all business, and demanding.  I could tell from reading the widow's responses that his attitude confused her.   I felt bad and tried to commiserate with her as much as I could in my capacity.  I thought : Why didn’t the new guy read the file and get a feel for his client?  Evidently he wasn’t the type.  There were plenty of men (and later, women, I was to discover) who, to cover their inadequacies, adapted a brusque, know-it-all attitude, bluffing their way along.

A former co-worker sent me an ad for an experienced property underwriter at Yosemite Insurance; I applied and was hired.  I gave my “gluing” instructor and his sidekick my two weeks’ notice.

Yosemite Insurance, as I noted earlier, was a small company on the second floor of a building near 4^th and  Market, ironically, where the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition now has its office.  (Research prompted me to correct the location published in the previous chapter.)  The office manager gave me a desk right outside R- Parker’s, my new boss’s, office.  Behind me was a window that overlooked busy Market Street where I could keep an eye on my bike, locked to a metal pole.  Parker was a big, handsome, strawberry blonde guy in his forties.  My first day, a tall, beefy man with a mop of wavy brown hair, graying at the temples, showed up at my desk with a cart full of supplies.  “Hi, I’m Verne,” he said, “You’ll need this stuff to get started.  Let me know if you need anything else.”  Turns out, I would run into him decades later, after experiences at a few more agencies and companies, at Marsh & McLennan, Inc., where I was hired as a junior account rep until being laid off for early retirement about 25 years later.  Verne ended up manager of their supply department.
        I tried to check on my bike only when Parker wasn’t in his office, which was almost impossible.  Seems he was always there on the phone, chain smoking.  One day, standing at the window looking at my bike and watching people stream down Market Street, I sensed someone come up beside me.  It was Parker.
       “Watcha looking at, down there, hon?” he asked.  So I told him.  “Oh,” he said, “if that’s it, just bring it up to the office and park it in the supply room.”  I was going to like it here.

Next up:  Chapter 9, Part Four.  My Own “Office;”  Ruth Gordon and the Yellow Dress; Supply Room: Bikes okay;; Hallways: not; And, The Pyramid.