It wasn't the job of my dreams but it was a full time job, with benefits, and that's all that mattered.  

It was the early 1980's.  I was 23.  I'd graduated with an English degree and not much else and I had to find work quickly.  The student loan bills came due right on time and I soon added a car payment to my monthly expenses.

While I continued to look for something more appropriate, I accepted a job at a large plumbing supply company.  It was an entry level office position; boring stuff, mainly phone work, filing, sorting mail, paging the sales staff.

As the interview with Mark, the company owner, wound down and it was apparent he was going to offer me the job, he cleared his throat and said, "Now ah, Margaret, you've worked around guys before, right?  You know how they can be."  All the sales staff plus the warehouse personnel, with whom I'd also have contact, were men.  The only other female was the grandmotherly-looking front desk receptionist.

Sure I'd worked around guys before.  All the professors in the college Finance department, where I'd been a typist for the previous four years, were men. They were always in a hurry, always wanting something done yesterday.  Many of them were from other countries:  China, Korea, India, Iran.  I could barely understand them.  But they were guys."  

"Of course I have," I told him.  "Why do you ask?"

"Well you know how guys are.  They like to joke around a lot.  It's the whole 'boys will be boys' thing.  They don't mean any harm though. They're just a bunch of crazy salesmen.  You'll see."

I did see, starting from day one, when the grandmotherly receptionist said good morning, then told me, "The boys were hoping you'd be the one who got the job.  They rated all the candidates Mark interviewed and they said you were the best-looking.  He let them have the final say; all he cared about was if you could type and string a sentence together."

Why how flattering!  That knowledge would surely take the sting out of writing those monthly checks for the thousands of dollars in student loans that I owed.

Nothing the college career counselors told me, nothing in all the books I'd read about finding a job, nothing in my experience working with the foreign professors, prepared me for my first "real" job. 

It started immediately.  Those crazy suit-and-tie salesmen, mostly married men in their thirties and forties and many with children, took pains to make me feel at home.

What a grand old time we had as they snuck up behind me and massaged my shoulders, whispering crude and barely audible things, while I was on the phone with one of the company's suppliers.  How I looked forward to one or more of them rubbing up against me as I leaned over file drawers, frantically pulling orders fast as I could, hoping to avoid them.  (Whoops, guess I misjudged the space in this aisle, sorry Margaret!) 

And how I welcomed their fashion advice:   You really ought to undo a couple more buttons on that blouse, y'know.  You should wear your skirts a little tighter, Margaret.  Nice heels; how 'bout you meet me in my office and we try them out on my back.

I especially looked forward to the times they'd take turns disguising their voices and fake incoming calls, trying to outdo each other:  Hello, this is Mr. Jack Mehoff.  I have to talk to my saleman, John Smith, right away.  Can you page him?

I'd say, "Seriously.  You must think I'm an idiot."  The "caller" would act indignant and say something like, Ma'am, I have an urgent need and unless you can take of it for me, I need to speak with my salesman.  If you refuse to page him, I want to speak with Mark." 

Then, per company protocol, I'd have to say over the intercom, for all to hear, including everyone in the office, the warehouse, and any customers who happened to be in the plumbing supply showroom, Jack Mehoff holding on line two for John Smith.  I could hear the muffled laughter from parts hither and yon.

It was beyond hilarious and never knowing what to expect from day to day made it that much funnier.  Except I was the only one who wasn't laughing.

My hopes for an ally in the receptionist were quickly dashed.  She'd worked there for years and knew all those guys from the time they'd started.  She loved them.  One day she asked me - or rather, told me - they're the greatest bunch, aren't they.

I replied that they made me sick, they were a bunch of lecherous jackals,   and she looked at me like I was crazy.

"That's the trouble with college girls like you, thinking you're better because you've been fed all kinds of nonsense about how things should be. They're men, honey.  That's how men act in the real world.  Get used to it.   You're overly sensitive." 

Overly sensitive.  Was it perhaps true?

I spent most of my time in the office but I had to make frequent trips to the warehouse, to follow up on orders.  The warehouse guys wore coveralls, not suits.  They packed boxes for shipments, unloaded trucks, repaired parts.   Their hands were often covered in grease. 

I felt a surge of relief every time I went back there.  These were genuinely nice guys.  They didn't make lewd or suggestive comments.  I could talk to them, banter with them, and not have to feel like I was constantly on guard.  I'd sometimes find reasons to go back there, just to get away. 

But when I couldn't get away, I wasn't completely without defenses.

I'd pretend I didn't see one of them coming up behind me and I'd suddenly and forcefully  push back in my desk  and ram him.  It was gratifying to hear the painful yelps.

I'd "accidentally" stomp on someone's foot with the heel of my very high- heeled shoe.  I'd get a cup of steaming hot coffee (which I had to make, first thing in the morning) and "stumble' into one of them, spilling the whole thing on him, at just the right moment.

I'd deliberately screw up orders.  Not pass on time-sensitive messages until days later.  Hold back their mail when they told me they were expecting something important.

When their significant others called  I'd sometimes say things like, Omigod, he's married? He never said anything about a wife.  Well he sure acts single! Chuckle chuckle.

How often I did these things was in direct proportion to what they'd do to me. They would have occurred much more frequently had I not been able to keep a tight lid on the feeling of rage that had begun to summer just below the surface of my smiling exterior.

I kept sending out resumes.  I told myself repeatedly, You can stick it out, it's only temporary.  But I also worried.  Could this be the reality of the world of work, no matter where I went?  Did a person, meaning a woman, just have to go along with certain things and accept that that's the way it was?  Pretend she was having so much gosh darned fun because she didn't want to be labeled "sensitive" or "uptight."  Or worse, lose her job. 

I was there for a little over a year and I dreaded going to work every single day. I couldn't relax and despite my fixed smile, I hated those men.  Had the thick-headed clods been a little more sensitive, they'd have been mortified by all the fun I was having.