Chapter 13, Part Three. Another move- this time to the first floor, near the main entrance to the building.

The Wall near the entrance on California Street.  Notice the holes where a plaque had been removed.

Plaque designating the site as a cemetery.

Fireman's Fund's location on Laurel Heights was built on a former burial ground.

The illustration  is of the wall fronting the company's California Street side.  The other is of the plaque designating the site as a cemetery that had been removed from the wall, is shown on the right.  In 1924, three cemeteries started relocating south. All Laurel Hill burials were eventually moved to Colma after 1937, when the Supervisors successfully passed their ordinance. WWII slowed efforts, which weren’t completed until 1948.

Early one week, we trainees were told that we were moving down to the first floor to join the rest of the systems analysts, to have our desks packed up by Friday, and report to our new (to us) department on Monday. 

Monday morning, a woman from the human resources department (formerly “Personnel” ) met me.    She introduced me to my immediate boss, Don P. (whom I'd described in a former post).   I would meet Fred Hyndman later.  To my surprise and delight I saw that Wes Schultz would be sitting right behind me.  His face lit up when I walked up to his desk.

“I thought you went to that brokerage company,” I said.

           “Well, these guys-“ he waved a hand at Don and Fred,  “-got me more money than they were going to pay me, so . .  .  I’m used to it here.  I like it.  Even more now that you’re in my department"- he laughed, “ again!”  Jerry Nelson ended up at a desk catty-corner from me, across the room.  As I was unpacking my box and arranging things on top and in drawers, Don P. stopped by.  He leaned over, and said, quietly,

“You understand that this move is not a promotion.  You’re still a trainee in the program testing division.” 

“No,” I said, “Bonnie, who recruited me, told me I’d be hired as a systems analyst trainee and that the testing was part of it.”  Don leered, then said,

“You were misled, dear.  This is a two-year job and only then will you be eligible for that position.”  Shit!  I thought. “Sorry,” he said, ambling off.  My compensation was that I was paid so much more than any job I’d had so far.  I figured as long as I’d be working with Wes and Jerry, I’d be fine.  Wes was on his phone while all this was going on.  I could tell by what he was saying that it was a personal call.  It seemed he was on his phone more than actually working.  His conversations were suggestive and sexual and I was uncomfortable overhearing them.   Then he’d say something clever and I’d end up laughing.

Fred Hyndman welcomed me to the department.  He was a tall man with what used to be called an “olive complexion. “  He wore a brush mustache and had straight black hair in a traditional corporate haircut.  He seemed approachable and affable and I found out that when I couldn’t work things out with Don, I could go to Fred.  I sensed he was on my side.   He later told me his father was German, his mother was from South America (I don’t remember which country).   He stood  rather than sat behind his desk in his office .  One day as I passed by, he said, more musing, talking over me and looking off into the distance.  He imparted the following wisdom:  “You know?  When you take vitamins, you don’t have to throw your head back to swallow gelatin caps because they float.”  

That first week, we took a shuttle to Lucas Green, our branch office devoted to the writing, development and testing of dedicated computer programs.  When for some reason I had to go there alone, I'd get off the bus on 101 at the Lucas Valley stop and walk across on short weedy underpass to the other side.  Rather than trek around to the entrance on Lucas Valley road, I'd jump across a water-filled gully, climb up the bank (see below) and weave my way through the shrubs to the walkway leading to the entrance.  George Lucas's Skywalker ranch was further down the road, hidden from view among rolling hills and trees.  In 1978, Lucas began buying the land, named for the rancher, John Lucas (no relation, despite rumors) who inherited the land from Tom Murphy, in 1853.

Lucas Green location

 At the time, I took a break from reading “The Art of War,” intending to utilize some of the strategy at work, and started on a book of fairy tales from The Violet Fairy Tale Book.  I was reading it on the shuttle.  Our driver, I’ll call him Glenn, was just that- a driver on contract.  He was a short, 40ish guy with waving graying, brown hair.  He had stuck a rose stencil on the van’s dashboard.   When he saw me reading fairy tales, he asked if I’d mind reading aloud as a sort of entertainment on the way.

Cover of The Violet Fairy Tale book.

 “Man,” he said, “dig- driving back and forth is totally boring. And they don’t want me using this.” He indicated the radio and tape drive.  So, on our trips, I read fairy tales.  No one complained and most looked forward to them:  Candace, for one, and a 20- something good-looking guy who wore tight-fitting Calvin Klein jeans with Oxford button down shirts.  I teased him, mispronouncing the label as “Clean” instead of “Kline.”  Calling him, “Mr. Kleen Jeans”.    He tolerated my lame attempt at humor with a gratuitous laugh.  One thing I noticed about working in computer related departments, men didn’t have to wear suits.  Still, an unspoken rule was that women had to dress  professionally- pant’s-or business suits, tailored dresses, heels, etc.  I started wearing flats since I no longer worked in the financial district.

Later, back on Laurel Hill, Don asked me what was the significance of Glenn’s rose stencil  “It’s some kind of cult symbol, isn't it?  What does it mean?” 

“I have no idea,” I said, “Why don’t you ask him.”

“Me?  Why should I?  I don’t talk to service employees.  Could you find out?”

“No.  If you want to know, you ask him.  I couldn’t care less what he’s involved with.”

“That’s because you belong to it.”

“What?”  From then on, I made sure I had very little to do with Don. Yet, in order for him to explain a program  we were going to test, he’d pull up a chair beside my desk, lean over to show me diagrams and flow charts.  That close, I could see the dandruff flakes in his reddish-grey hair and on the shoulders of his windowpane brown plaid, wool sport coat .  His teeth were yellow and malformed.  Often he’d reach down to pull his sagging socks up from his scuffed loafers, revealing ankles ingrained with dirt.  And he smelled sour, like he’d slept in his clothes.  He was married, he’d told me.  I guessed his  wife either must not care, be just like him, or, had lost her sense of smell and had bad eyesight.  He had two kids.  His thirteen year old daughter,  he confessed  to me in a candid moment, kept running away from their Novato tract home. (I would actually meet his entire family later.)

At Lucas Green, we were given a tour of the mainframes which were housed in a huge temperature controlled room with a paneled floor beneath which ran bundles of wires.  Behind glass paneled cabinets we saw what looked to me like giant revolving tape recorders.  The head of that department explained to us that every single bit of program information was on those reels as was every keystroke that entered data into the computers.   It was mind-boggling.

A mainframe computer room

 We were to test the accounting system so were shown which pre-loaded computers we’d use.  There were people there from other branches, too.  We were given hard-copy manuals of instruction of what we were supposed to find when we executed specific steps, entering certain characters and figures into labeled fields on the screen.  If what we entered came up with a different result than what was in the manual, we had to write out an “error message” form, which, at the end of the day, a programmer would collect to figure out what went wrong and correct it.  A woman from another branch kept calling them “air” messages.  “This don’t make no sense to me at all!” she exclaimed, “why the hell they’d say these’re “air “messages.”  Among us we decided to let the programmer explain, but still, we couldn’t help sniggering to ourselves every time she’d say, sighing and shaking her head, “Another damn air message!”  Needless to say, testing was really pretty brain-deadening and it felt like there were more errors than not.  Still we were told it was great that we were finding "bugs" so the accounting system could be reprogrammed. 

Late 1969 Lucas Green computer programmers

On Laurel Hill, the work was both boring and detailed with a lot of down time which made me, Jerry,  Wes and some others a little crazy.  Early December, we put up Christmas decorations.  A short,  sandy-haired, nondescript  man in our department, who came and went so I never really got to know him, decided to hang mistletoe from the particle-board, paneled ceiling.  He chose to stand on a desk half-way between mine and Jerry’s.  He climbed up, holding his mistletoe, reached up, realized he couldn’t reach the ceiling, jumped down, grabbed a chair, put it on the desk, climbed back up with his mistletoe, climbed on to the chair and immediately came crashing down with his mistletoe and all the other red and green crepe paper, holly, poinsettia cut out decorations that had been put up previously.  Words escaped from my mouth,  “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (The film had been out for a couple of years).  Jerry, Wes and a few others laughed, or choked trying not to.  The man, embarrassed, struggled to his feet, laughing at himself.  “I will not try that again.”  Wes, who was over six feet tall went over to him, took his mistletoe, asked him if he was all right, then standing on a chair, hung the kissing herb and re-hung all the rest of the fallen decorations.  We all clapped and hooted.

Often, Don would walk over to my desk with the excuse that he’d forgotten to tell me something important.  He’d sit there, watching me prepare test data to bring to Lucas Green.  At break time one morning, with him  sitting beside my desk, I went up to the cafeteria, one floor up, for coffee.   When I got back, Don told me that there was too much work to be done for me to be taking breaks, and that I was to report to him, ask him if I could go on break and let him know when I returned.  The next break time, I uses a tactic I found in "The Art of War" to let Don know I had some control.  I surprised him by instigated a meeting over coffee in the cafeteria and read him our rights regarding breaks from the company employee manual.  He quit hassling me.

I ended up staying in that department for over two years.  During which, in the outside world, Iran had invaded the embassy in Tehran and held hostages; an American Airlines plane crashed at O’Hare airport, killing almost 300 passengers along with people on the ground.  At the time it was said to be “The deadliest aviation incident on U.S. soil.”   US Government lent Chrysler enough to keep the auto company from going bankrupt.  The US boycotted Moscow’s 1980 summer Olympics to protest its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and enacted a grain embargo against the Soviet Union, supported by the European Commission.

During my summer vacation that year, while visiting my brother in La Jolla, we heard about the eruption of Mount  St. Helens, killing over fifty people, some brainless enough to stay in their campsites even though warned to evacuate.  1980 was a horrible year in which John Lennon was assassinated and Ronald Reagan was elected president- the Iran hostages were released when he  was sworn into office in January 1981.  People suspected some behind the scenes machinations, which were later revealed to be true.

Next up: Chapter 13, Part Four.  Over Don P., Hyndman promotes me.  The branch moves to Novato.  A tragedy occurs in the life of a popular employee.

The Novato location which encompasses both Laurel Hill and  Lucas Green operations.

  I leave The Fund permanently with a severance package that allows me to focus on theatre for a year. 

Chapter 13, Part One: I’m back on Laurel Hill as a systems analyst trainee. I meet my co-workers one of whom happens to be Wes Schultz.

As I start a new chapter in my life, I now ride up Arlington Street in Glen Park to San Jose Ave; left to Valencia to Market. Cross Market cutting diagonally across streetcar tracks to Franklin, up Franklin to McAllister, right on Webster to Sutter, left on Sutter to Fillmore; left at Pine and on up to Presidio (getting off and walking when the hills get too steep); right at California, left into Fireman’s Fund’s parking lot, lock my bike to a post under a cantilever corner of the building.  Bonnie meets me on the second floor, shows me to my desk on the end of the second to the last row of about four rows of 4 or five desks, and leaves.  I rarely see her again. Seems she goes to other offices to oversee setting up their systems analyst departments.   A supply guy shows up with an assortment of desk accessories: In-Out baskets, desk calendar, paper, pens; waste basket.  A mid-western looking blonde with a Farrah Fawett hairstyle, who sits behind me, dumps a couple of thick, heavy, black, 3-ring binders on my desk.

Farrah Fawcett

                “Hi, I’m Barbara (Not her real name),” she introduced herself.  I did the same.  “Just start reading these,” she continued, “and someone will come and tell you about the training.”  Turns out, the someone is the guy at the next desk who happened to be away.  I open a binder which is filled with technical information about the job, and start reading, flipping past the first couple of pages to the contents pages: several of them.  I’m about to fall asleep when I hear and smell the coffee cart trundling down the aisle.  It’s only nine-thirty yet it feels like I’ve been there for hours and wonder if I can last the day.  Unlike the Auto Liability department on Front Street where Pete spouted bad puns, Laura and I enjoyed conversations about abalone fishing, North Coast beaches, and our personal disclosures about our lives outside of the office; there was Ivy’s startled snort as she woke at her desk, and looked around, embarrassed this department was eerily quiet; the silence broken only by the occasional ringing of a phone followed by a muted conversation.  I felt as though all eyes were on me as I noisily turned pages in the binder.

                Slowly, people meandered over to the cart manned by Rosa, a motherly, middle age Latina.  I got a cup and a bear claw pastry and went back to reading.  The coffee was horrible, smelled acrid.  I thought I could mask the taste with the pastry, so took a couple of bites.  That night, I felt sick and vowed I would go on a three-day vegetable juice cleansing ritual that I’d been putting off for months.  I cooked up a bunch of veggies- carrots, beets, celery, etc., and strained them.  The next morning, I poured the reddish, gray-green liquid into a glass bottle, set it in my bag and took off for work.  I disciplined myself to follow through no matter how hungry I got. 

                Jerry Nelson, the someone who was to walk me through my job, had returned.  I felt self-conscious about drinking my concoction so I turned my back so he wouldn’t see me.   He was a handsome guy in his early 50s with riveting blue eyes.  His wavy brown hair receded from a forehead from which an intriguing scar traced a thin line from his hairline diagonally to just above his right eyebrow.  He had a great sense of humor so we were simpatico and ended up friends.  He went on to narrate, live, a short story I adapted for one of my mime pieces and recorded it for future performances.

                “What are you drinkin’ there, kiddo?  It looks vile,” was the first thing he said after we introduced ourselves.   He spoke in a mesmerizing James Mason voice sans accent.  I explained and went on about how the coffee here made me sick, so I wanted to clean my digestive system. 

                “You wanna taste?” I said, smiling as I proffered the jar.  He rolled his chair backwards, held up his hands and laughed,

                “I don’t think so.  I got used to the swill they pass off as coffee here.”  He paused, then said, “I’m supposed to give you some idea of what we do here.  Okay, what we do is test and analyze prototype accounting software to weed out all the bugs before it goes live.”

                “Here?” I asked him, “I don’t’ see any computers.”

                “We have to go to our Lucas Valley branch office up in Marin,” he said.  “I was there all day yesterday.  That’s where all the computers and mainframe are, and the programmers who write code for the software for just about every job in the company.”

                “Wow!” I said, “Do we take a bus?”

                “No, there’s a shuttle.  We check in here first.   Then if we get called to test some software, we go.”

                “Oh, good,” I said, “a chance to get out of this place for a few hours, anyway.”   He didn’t say a word.  I wondered if he was going to report me to our boss, whoever he/she was because I hadn’t met her/him yet, for not being all gung-ho about the job.

                It wasn’t until I attended two days of women’s seminars on assertiveness and career planning that left me depressed that I realized again how unsuited I was for the business world.   A woman named Andrea P.  led the talk.  She was short, stocky, with long wavy black hair, and wore a grey, sharkskin suit.  She climbed up on a stool and crossed her legs; her skirt, slit on one side up to mid-thigh, rode up almost to her hip.  She talked about how to handle sexual harassment.  I could only think, “Yeah, right!” then heard myself blurt out something that made everyone laugh.  A woman, Garilee L., from the in-house media department, video-taped the whole thing.  She told me afterwards that she couldn’t believe I was brave enough to speak out like I did because “I didn’t look the type.” A decade later, she would make a video of three of my mask pieces.

                One day I came to work and found Barbara at her desk, sobbing into a Kleenex.  I asked her what was wrong.

                “It’s my husband.  Bruce.  It’s my husband.”

                “Oh, what happened?  Was he in an accident?  Is he hurt?  Is he okay?”

                “I wish oh, I only wish?”

                “Barbara, what is it?  What happened?”  Maybe he lost his job, I thought.

                “He told me he wants a divorce.  Oh,” she wailed, “He’s gay!  He told me he’s gay and he’s in love with this man he’s been seeing for years.  He was Best Man at our wedding!”  Barbara pushed away from her desk and we watched her stumble down the aisle to the hall, crying.  A woman went after her.  Barbara left the office and never returned.  She had shown me pictures of her and  

Ken & Barbie

Bruce: a perfect Barbie and Ken couple.
 I wondered what happened to her.

                Our department soon moved down to the first floor, very close to the entrance I used coming in.  I was happy to see that Wes and I are again in the same department and he is sitting behind me; Jerry Nelson is across the room at a diagonal, within talking distance.  Here, I would at last meet my boss, Don P: a strange, misshapen, freckle-face man, whose head, with its Trump-like coif, appeared larger than his body, and when he turned, he had a Charlton Heston profile.  Someone must have pointed this out, because he purposely positioned himself so that it was prominent.  The head of our department was a Mr. Sanchez (I think that was his name).  He was  affable, and a head taller than Don P. and handsome, olive-skinned, in his 50s, with a mustache and coal black hair.   He seemed ineffectual and deferred to Don.   Until I left Fireman’s Fund after a few months when the company was going to move to its headquarters to Novato,  I not only met Don P.'s family, I discovered that he. had a beautiful singing voice and was a member of a Marin County Light Opera company.  Still there were some very unpleasant, if not disgusting aspects  to this man.

Next: Chapter 13, Part Two.   Shuttling to Novato; “Air” messages;   I use tactics described in Sun Tzu's  "The Art of War” to confront Don over a disagreement.  I leave Fireman’s Fund permanently to concentrate on theatre.  I had to be very aware of the wording I used when I resigned otherwise I would have lost my payout which would finance my so-called career until it afforded me a living.  If not, I'd have years of job experience to fall back on.  At my going-away luncheon, I acknowledge Don's mastery of "lifemanship" (look it up) which he took as a compliment.