My First Job
In 1966, I returned home to Philadelphia after a botched attempt at elopement during my second semester of college. My parents, learning that I had withdrawn, alerted the state police, and I was eventually tracked down in Virginia after a long Greyhound bus trip from the college in Massachusetts. As I have reported the full story of this escapade elsewhere, I will just say it was a full-scale debacle, expensive for my parents and humiliating for me. Later my children would ask to hear it at family gatherings and find it very amusing. Their misdeeds were minor when compared to this.
The morning after I came home in February 1966, I found the Want Ads (a newspaper section I didn’t know existed till then) of the Philadelphia Inquirer on the kitchen table. Several ads were circled in angry red. Lots of exclamations points decorated it. Most of the ads were for jobs at diners and pizza places or as store clerks in pet stores or Kresge’s, but one was for a job at Curtis Publishing Company in downtown Philadelphia, a bus and a subway ride from my house. I had no idea what the job entailed, but the skills listed seemed basic enough for a high school graduate with one semester of college under her belt. So newspaper in hand, I made my way on public transportation to 6th and Walnut Street. I was hired on the spot. Apparently my one semester in college and decent high school grades has won me the position—a job I soon realized I was ill-equipped to do. I had no idea if the salary listed was reasonable, having never had a full-time job before. ($55.00 a week). My parents had given me no advice on what I could expect and whether I should try to barter them up. So I said nothing, just filled out the paperwork and was shown my desk. Most of the other employees in the large office were forty years my senior.
Curtis Publishing Company was unknown to me although it was a famous Philadelphia landmark. The only downtown buildings I was familiar with were the four major department stores (John C. Wanamakers, Lit Brothers, Gimbels, and Strawbridges) and the handful of elegant movie houses. Center City Philadelphia was ground zero to dozens of well-known movie theatres (today there are just a handful). Clustered in districts on Market, Chestnut, South, and North 8th Streets, these entertainment venues (such as the Boyd, the Fox, the Stanley and the Goldman) lined the sidewalks with blinking lights and glistening facades, drawing thousands of visitors downtown. Many Saturdays, my girlfriends and I traveled down to see first-run movies at these palaces. We would dress up (heels and gloves included) for the occasion as was the custom in the early to mid-sixties. The movies playing there would not make their way to our shabby neighborhood theaters for weeks. They didn’t seem like the same movie at all viewed in the Renel Theater that carried a smell that was not just popcorn.
Curtis Publishing Company, my future place of employment, was founded in 1891, and was a major publisher and home to Ladies Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, Jack and Jill Magazine and several other notable publications. It was an historic building right across the street from Independence Hall and had features such as the Tiffany-designed “Dream Garden” mosaic, atriums, a lot of bronze fixtures and chandeliers, and other notable architectural elements. It occupied an entire city block and still sits there today. From the floors to the ceilings and everywhere in between, there were exquisite details inspired by the French Beaux-Arts architectural movement. The Dream Garden mosaic, designed by Philadelphia-born artist Maxfield Parrish, is composed of 100,000 pieces of iridescent Favrile glass. The building was 12 stories high.
By the time I arrived at its door in 1966, it was in decline as a first-tier publisher, and various departments had been combined to save money. Many attempts had been made to rescue it with bank loans and money from a multitude of investors, and all of them had failed. Its failure was mostly blamed on a lack of diversification in its publications and the aging population who subscribed to them. Its publications were no competition for magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Playboy and Glamour, which had many more subscribers. They looked to be from different centuries. Today, the building still stands it all its glory, but it largely offers services to self-publishing authors.
During my six months in this building, I didn’t notice a single one of the architectural glories it featured. I walked to the bank of elevators that day and took one to Personnel. I was hired in purchasing. None of the departments that had a hope of interesting me had jobs. I had left college thoughtlessly with no idea of what I might do instead. I had hitched my wagon to a cartoon aficionado with no ability to draw. Much like I had given no thought of what I would major in when I traveled off to Massachusetts, I gave no thought on how I would support myself once I left. That would be the concern of my intended husband whose greatest skill was shooting a basketball into my wastepaper basket.
Curtis Publishing Company seemed to think I was someone who could have a fairly responsible job. Or they weren’t exactly flooded with applicants. So within a week or so, after mastering the antiquated adding machine, my job seemed somewhat above my pay grade. When things were delivered to various departments in the building, I marched down to that department and checked that the order was complete and signed for by the department head. Then I went back to purchasing and checked to make certain the bill was correct, and then authorized payment. I expected someone senior to me would check on the process (or at least on my math), but Curtis was so short of personnel by then that no one did. My high school math skills were apparently expected to keep the place afloat. Most of the offices on my floor of the building were either empty or occupied by jocular men who seemed to do little more than banter and flirt. Clearly they could see which was the wind was blowing.
But I soldiered on, spending an hour or more to get to the office each day. My parents decided to ask me to pay room and board since I had cost them a semester’s non-refundable tuition with my stunt. By the time I paid them and my taxes, I could probably have made more money babysitting. As summer drew near, I noticed there was no air-conditioning in my office. Just a couple of lazy ceiling fans that moved Philadelphia’s humid air around. One day a woman in my office had a stroke and died on the gurney.
Around then, I started looking for a new job. My search was sped up when I was accosted by a man in a convertible who blocked by way in crossing a street with his huge car coming home from work. In the sixties in Philly, many screen doors were still open so I swiveled and ran up a walk and into a house. The woman, who was ironing, called the police once I told her what had happened. The police escorted me home and my parents and I decided I would look for a job with an easier trip home.
My next -door neighbor was a lineman for Bell of Pa and suggested I apply for work as a service representative. So that is what I did. My mother worked near the Bell office and would give me a ride. And my pay would be $75 a week. I’d start my three month’s training in two-weeks time.
Unfortunately when I told some of my colleagues at Curtis about my new job and new salary, it created dissent in the office and the next thing I knew two burly men were escorting me out of the building after I bundled my few personal items. We exited via the main door and I finally saw the attractive mural I hadn’t laid eyes on in the six months I worked there.
