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After graduating High-School in the early 70’s, I had always planned on going to college. My guidance councilor even recommended that I apply to Columbia, although I knew it was well out of reach for me, financially. After 16 years as an Engineer for RCA, my Father had been laid off in a move that today is euphemistically called downsizing. They even swallowed 80% of his pension! My parents asked me to put off college for a little while, just until Dad got back on his feet. I agreed, and stayed home to help keep the family financially stable.
Dad never did get another real job. Something about being over qualified, which is what they say when they mean over 40. He did manage to get a few part-time, temporary, minimum wage deals, but nothing that paid the bills. To make matters worse, Mom developed a terminal heart condition, and became invalid.
In the meantime, I began working at a fast food place called Gino’s. Minimum wage, and all the chicken and burgers I could pull out of the spoilage bin, (and I did when the groceries got low at home). There was one thing that did give me hope, however. Gino’s had a policy of promoting from within. There were no managers working there at the time who hadn’t started off exactly where I was. It wasn’t the sort of future that I had envisioned for myself, but it was a living, and the managers made a decent salary for the time. I decided to work toward that as a goal.
During the next five years, I stayed with the company, transferring between stores as better positions opened up. From part-time to full-time, group leader then manager trainee, I was at least fulfilling the dream of climbing the corporate ladder to a successful career with the company, or so I thought. Then, just when I was only weeks away from completing the one year training program and earning for myself a position as an assistant manager, Lou, the head store manager, introduced me to Karen, my new boss.
In a new company policy inspired by the EEOC and Affirmative Action, the company decided to start hiring their new managers off the street, and, not surprisingly all of them were women. Initially, I didn’t have a problem with this. I figured that they just got lucky, and happened to be in the right place at the right time when a shortcut opened up for them. What the hell, I’d have done it too, given the chance. “More power to ‘em,” I thought, besides there was still plenty of room in the company for hard working guys like me. Right?
“Ummm, I’m gonna have to talk to you about that,” Lou told me.
It seems that along with the decision to begin hiring managers off the street, the company felt that they no longer needed a training program, so it was terminated, period!
I was forced to accept a “lateral demotion” back to full-time employee. Fortunately, it would not affect the $3.35/hour I was earning and they generously allowed me to wear my shirt and tie until the end of the week, but that was it.
In addition to this new hiring policy it was now required that all managerial personnel have at least an Associates Degree. All the training, all the studying, all the tests I had done during the past year was now worth squat as far as the company was concerned.
Despite this, Lou begged me to stay, and promised to promote me as soon as things “opened up” again. This was really important to him, because although Karen did have an associates degree (in Psychology), this was the first job she'd ever had! He needed someone to keep an eye on her, gently guide her, in other words, to train her, and he wanted that someone to be me. Sure, she was two years younger than me, had no seniority, no established work ethic, and was already earning twice as much as me, but this was all in the interest of fairness. Seeing as how I was an over-privileged White male, and she was an oppressed woman, what right did I have to complain about it?
Naively clinging to what was left of my dreams, I agreed, although it did not go well. Within weeks she found excuses to fire most of my best people, and expected me to pick up the slack while I trained their replacements. She also had a habit of bawling me out in front of customers and fellow employees whenever I questioned her judgment, or tried to correct her mistakes. (I was being insubordinate.) When I decided to back off and let her learn from her own mistakes (and she made some big ones), I was castigated for not doing my job.
Eventually, she gave me a written reprimand for having a bad attitude, and demanded I sign it. I penned my two-week notice on it instead. The next day, Lou informed me that Karen would be willing to forget about the reprimand if I would simply apologize to her.
I refused. I’d had enough and told Lou if he thought my apology would solve the problem, then he might as well start looking for another job himself.
Within a year, the entire company folded due to poor management.
I suppose you could say that Affirmative Action did provide Equal Opportunity, in a way. After all, hundreds of hard working men and women like me were all equally unemployed.
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