My cubicle at work was just as dreary and devoid of personality as my humble dwelling. Although my new boss was friendly and welcoming, spending considerable time showing me around the facility and introducing me to numerous people, whose names I could never remember, I felt like an obvious stranger. People peered out from behind their computer screens to see “The New Ph.D.”, as I had become known. My first weeks at Contessa Cosmetics were unspeakably dull. Dr. Sebetich provide me with plenty of reading material to familiarize myself with the company, its products and current areas of product development. He also arranged a schedule of interviews and visits, including a trip to the midwestern production facility. While Ralph managed to keep me busy, nothing of consequence occupied my time. I bounced from one person’s office to the next, often to a project meeting where my only purpose was to learn and become acquainted with associates. I sat in my boring cubbyhole reading endless documents. Of course, I was learning, but I logged a seemingly infinite number of seated hours, doing nothing especially productive.
Weeks passed and I still had no responsibilities, though I was invited to more meetings and occasionally someone requested my opinion. Dr. Sebetich assigned an assistant to me, a gesture that established my position in the corporate hierarchy and gave me something to do. Although we met previously, Luwanda and I took to each other immediately. My first experience as someone’s boss turned into a friendship rather than an authoritative relationship. Luwanda worked odd hours, usually arriving after lunch and staying into the evening to conduct consumer focus group sessions. She held a bachelor’s degree in psychology and had thirteen years of experience, starting as a technician and eventually working up to a consumer specialist. Luwanda greeted housewives in the afternoon and professional people in the evenings as they filed in for group interviews about new products or concepts. These people formed the foundation of consumer research. They provided a barometer of what the public wanted that was either not available or inappropriately marketed.
I conducted plenty of focus groups as a graduate student, and stepped into my new role as Luwanda’s supervisor with ease. Dr. Sebetich and his superiors probably saw this decision as another opportunity for me to learn about the company’s workings and to interact with its consumers. Previously, Luwanda had reported directly to Ralph Sebetich, and my appointment freed time in his otherwise insane schedule. I accompanied Luwanda to several focus groups, exploring her techniques and discussing new methods with her afterward. We made a good team, though I was not actually performing any independent research, and Luwanda did nothing especially different than what I learned as a student. But now I was the boss. Instead of doing the mundane work myself, I was the overseer.
This, and a favorable rapport with my assistant, contributed to an unprecedented feeling of self-worth, one I had never experienced before. Suddenly, at Contessa Cosmetics as the supervisor of one employee, I had become someone special, someone I could be proud of. I went shopping almost every weekend and dressed fashionably for work each morning. I felt terrific, better than I ever imagined. I had “Ph.D.” printed on my bank checks after my name. I bought furniture and ornaments to fill my drab apartment. I taped photographs of my friends and cat in my cubicle and decorated it with clippings from magazines and newspapers that declared my personality. I ordered dinners delivered to my apartment. Crowning myself a doctoral princess, I even had my hair and nails done.
While settling into life as a consumer scientist and someone’s boss, I did no skating. Not only did I come home from work exhausted, becoming adjusted to a new house and community filled my scant free hours with errands. Discovering area rinks had not risen to the forefront of my priorities list, though I drove passed a roller rink everyday on my way to work. One afternoon, I turned into the parking lot to look the place over. Closing my car door, memories of Sacramento roller skating produced a warm, peaceful smile on my face. Inside, a few kids skated on a wooden floor that was interrupted in the center by two support posts. Like the Arctic Circle, the building had been a store of some sort before its reincarnation as a roller rink. A couple of skinny young girls did badly wrapped double jumps around the buttresses. Standing by the carpeted barrier, I looked at the floor. It was worn and dull but its patina filled my mind with images of garage roller skating, the tricks I taught myself on concrete.
As a child, I longed for a roller skating lesson. Now the simple ability to give myself that forbidden luxury empowered me. Although the Arctic Circle essentially dissolved any residual interest in roller skating, standing in that wood-floored building renewed my need for a lesson. I did not necessarily wish to become seriously involved in roller skating, making the roller rink a part of my life as the Martinsville Community Arena had been. I merely savored the ability to fulfill a childhood dream. One lesson might satisfy my needs without relearning the jumps and spins that I had taught myself years before. I strolled toward the office and knocked confidently on the door. A woman about my age appeared with a bored, annoyed expression on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asked flatly.
“I am interested in a private lesson.”
“How old is your child?” the woman inquired automatically.
I had skated in several ice rinks since my inception as an adult figure skater and had never been asked if the lessons were for my daughter. Now I was older, and dressed in a suit, making me look more mature and successful. “Actually, the lesson is for myself,” I corrected realizing an adult analog may not exist in the roller skating world.
The woman’s blank expression dissolved into a glimmer of understanding. “Oh, you want dance lessons. Let me give you Charlie’s phone number. He isn’t hear right now…”
“No, I want a freestyle lesson.” Apparently older people still dance-skated to organ music on Sunday afternoons. I may do that too someday, but not yet.
Now she looked completely taken aback. “Alright, I can give you a lesson.” She pulled an appointment book out of her pocket and skimmed its dog-eared pages. “Next Wednesday at 5:00. I have a cancellation then.”
I agreed to the time.
“Do you have skates?”
I told her I no longer owned a pair of roller skates, though I skated recreationally as a child and had experience with freestyle ice skating. In spite of my sophisticated clothing, the woman eyed me as though she had reached the bottom of her professional barrel. She was teaching grown women how to artistic roller skate in rented boots.
Luwanda appeared in the opening to my cubicle. “If you have a date after work, you’d better cancel it. The announcement meeting is scheduled for four o’clock.”
The place had been tense all week. Rumors abounded about closure of the Atlanta production facility. Hundreds of people were slated for layoffs. Many research and development employees maintained friendly relationships with associates at the plants. Only about six weeks into my career, I did not know anyone in Atlanta. Bitter words were hissed between disgusted employees in the corridors. Downsizing had been going on for years, but closing an entire plant was a serious step. Workers expected consequences at the R&D facility, if not now, then in the future. This was particularly disturbing to people caught between youth and retirement who were too young to move to Florida but would have difficulty finding a new job at an equivalent salary.
New to the corporate world, I had no frame of reference to gauge the reactions of my coworkers. Because I was inexperienced and unjaded, I felt no anger, but was not immune to the tension. Since Contessa Cosmetics had recently hired me, I feared I might be considered disposable and released. The company had survived without me before, I may be viewed as an unnecessary expense in light of these decisions.
I paced the hallway making several trips to the bathroom before the appointed hour. I also telephoned the roller rink to cancel my lesson. The sour-faced woman who had offered to provide instruction did not come to the phone. She was on the floor teaching another student, but I spoke with someone equally unpleasant who basically said: “Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell her,” and dropped the receiver back into its cradle. The coach probably had told her associates about the fancy suit-lady who wanted relive her childhood by disco skating in skuzzy rentals. I probably provided the rink folk with a few minutes of laughter and disappointment when I did not appear for my lesson.
While I did not lose my new job in the fallout of the Atlanta closing, it baptized me into the uncertain and competitive world of corporate downsizing. After that fateful day, the mood at the R&D center changed dramatically. People were skeptical, bitter and worried. Employees predicted cutbacks to filter into our site as well. Many people talked about mailing resumes and calling in sick to attend interviews. Those who bailed were not necessarily running to a more secure position, just a different one where they might feel more valuable and less likely to be eliminated in the near future.
“An ice skating lesson?” Luwanda asked after I told her about my cancellation.
“Actually roller, though I prefer ice skating. I just haven’t found an ice rink yet.”
“There’s a nice one about a half-hour from here. I take my kids there for group classes.” With that, Luwanda looked saddened. “I wish I could take them for more activities. It is just too difficult working so many evenings. They are asleep when I get home. Maybe my number will come up in the next mass layoff…”
My eyes met Luwanda’s. She blinked quickly to disperse gathering tears. My assistant looked tired and frightened, like many other people in the company who depended on their paychecks to support their families. Though Luwanda was married, her household relied on her income as well as her husband’s. Her young twin boys had started school a couple of years before and remained in after-care until their father picked them up at the end of the day. When Luwanda worked late; her husband prepared dinner, bathed them, and put them to bed before their mother returned home.
Luwanda was the quintessential working mom, the woman who supposedly had it all: marriage, children and career. Yet she looked exhausted and depressed. Luwanda was a consummate professional; her feelings did not surface during focus group interviews, and only rarely in the office. I thought about Luwanda often when I was alone in my apartment pigging out or cruising the mall for something to buy. She was a wonderful person; kind, gentle, caring, and a loving mother. We became quite friendly, often eating lunch together on a bench outside or in the cafeteria during bad weather. I became a sounding board for Luwanda’s concerns, not just about losing her job, but about missing out on the youth of her children. She feared coming home one evening to find her boys gone; grown with families of their own.
Although Luwanda drew a healthy salary, she wanted nothing more than to stay home with her children. She originally planned to be a school psychologist and held a primary school teaching credential. On a whim, as a graduating college senior, she signed up for an on-campus interview with Contessa Cosmetics. That interview led to her employment with the company, earning almost double what she could have expected as a beginning teacher.
My assistant popped her head into my cubicle and presented me with a hand-drawn map. “Here are the directions to the rink I was telling you about. I take my kids on Mondays, but they have freestyle Tuesday and Thursday nights. Give it a try.” Luwanda smiled, as she so often did, and disappeared again, back to her duties.
Talbert left me alone in my brand new, nearly vacant apartment. I had managed to buy or acquire minimal furnishings to interrupt the emptiness of the little one bedroom suite. While I wished Talbert to stay and see me off on my first day of real world work and to greet me when I returned home, hopefully happy, he declared that I had to experience this alone, as I would now have to live by myself on a daily basis. This realization made me tremble with uncertainty. I had never really been alone before. Even when I ventured across country to Virginia, a roommate awaited my arrival, however unpleasant she ultimately became. Now I was alone in a sparse apartment without a friend for hundreds of miles. I was very eager to get on with it and establish myself in this place, if only for a while.
Chapter 53 posted 6/11/02
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