“Halcyon Publishing Days” is an
occasional series, subheaded: When common sense was king, and people knew
how to trust [End note 1]
Here is a little story that
might appeal—since we, all of us in the U.S. lately, are presumably mulling
over what it means to have a business titan in the presidency, with a Cabinet
loaded with people who seem to be much more versed (experienced) in “making
good dollar” than in comporting themselves as good statesmen.
And this also (much closer to
home) is a good little measure of what it meant for me to move on from All
American Crafts in December 1991, as I did a mini-series on almost a year ago
(with the first substantive entry here),
and ended up (in February 1992) at AB Bookman (with an initial entry here and a more recent entry here).
Both were small businesses, with
some cheap ways of doing things, but in one respect, AB showed itself a big
step up in business practice on one item—which should have been a no-brainer to
follow.
Theme
note: This story will serve two themes: (1) not quite so relevant to
this AAC/AB story, but relevant to my “Policastro story” mini-series on my
other blog, how, if people want to show a special, stubborn sort of contempt for
or suspicion of you, they’ll do it through money; and (2) as may be relevant to
the new business-minded culture we are in, here in the U.S. (see top
paragraph), among other ways that an endemic, pervasive dishonesty (and/or
neuroticism) can be seen in business enterprises, if it comes about in little,
unjustifiable moves in accounting (you know, the department that seems to be
all about “being a sheep” and following simple math, and generally being honest
in situations where to be otherwise is like lying about what you had for breakfast),
then that suggests the whole company has a huge “circulatory system” of weird
dishonesty about it.
At both companies, I was on the
time clock. At AAC, I think the way the use of the time clock pieced out (it’s
been over 25 years, so memory doesn’t fully serve me) was like this: the people
who started there—including in editorial—who were, in effect, on probation or
otherwise low-level, were on the time clock; and people who became “salaried”
(though the salaries for editors averaged, by and large and from what I knew,
no more than $20,000 a year) no longer used the time clock.
I was on the time clock—both
before I was made full-time in July 1991 and after.
Let’s keep this simple: As I
recall, I kept close track of what my hours were, week by week, when I was
part-time, and compared what I calculated to what I was paid (and I think I
paid more attention to it after I was made full-time). This wasn’t hard to do,
given the small amount of time per week I was there (I think I was 15-20 hours
a week there to start, and the time per week increased as the period August
1990-June 1991 went on, especially after about February-March 1991). And it was
a smart thing to do, all things considered (as I felt at the time), as you will
see (and, I also mean, in view of my experience with employers over the much
longer term).
My being made full-time—which I
had lobbied for, in some way, for some time, and which other “allies” of mine,
including Lawrice (the editor of the woodworking magazine), made efforts to
support—was done with some reluctance by the higher-ups. And by higher-ups I
mean Jerry Cohen (the owner; whom I don’t harbor that much of a “grudge” over
regarding the tacky turns AAC took for me); and Camille, the editorial
director. At least at certain times, Camille ostensibly tried to “work for” me
in trying to argue to Jerry justification for making me full-time; and I know
she did this to some concrete extent; but over the longer term, from many bits
of evidence, it was easy to see how she was at least as much about protecting
her own standing with Jerry as she was “advocating” for someone like me. (End
note 2)
And a huge “subtext” to how I
was handled was very simple, and was understood by others there (End note 3) well enough: the company
really preferred women in the various editorial positions (with an “exception
that proved the rule” like Matt Jones, who was charged with heading a few
magazines), and I was a tough bird to swallow as a male (and I think this was
true for Camille, who openly conveyed she wasn’t entirely comfortable working
with me, but importantly it wasn’t true just regarding her). Camille even
remarked to me (once I was made full-time) things like (1) I couldn’t ask women
there to do my typing for me (even though I’d already been doing it there for
months without complaint, and willingly continued to do it—it was actually fun
for me) and (2) she uttered some apology for the pay I ended up getting (I
remained with the $7.60 an hour I’d been bumped up to by about January 1991),
as if “as a male” I might object to the low pay (I didn’t); in fact, I think at
one point she thought I wouldn’t take the full-time position in view of the pay
(though I did).
##
But another person became involved
in the apparent “subtle institutional objection” to my being there: Lois F.,
the head accountant, who usually had been very cordial to me (her associate was
Diane D., whom I linked to a photo of in the 2016 series). Now this is where
things got really peculiar. (And I should note that this accounting thing, it
seemed to me at the time, came more from pressure applied, along however-specific
lines, from Jerry’s direction, not
from Camille’s. Whether it could be
called a way to get me to be insulted enough to quit my job of my own accord—a topic
that is suitable in other workplace discussions—isn’t clear here.)
As Camille had said to me in
about spring 1991, Jerry only wanted to hire me full-time if it could be
justified by the number of magazine issues to be handled (which on the surface
made sense). (This though the number of issues later in 1991 did increase—the
art director commented once to the effect that the 60+ for the year was the
most they’d done in a year—and my workload from July through November 1991 [though,
characteristically, Camille didn’t compile such details related to editing, nor
did she especially want to hear them] was close to 1.8 million words, a record
compared to later places I would work at.)
However it might seem to you
like a “load of crap” that there should be hesitation to make me full-time
based on workload (and it’s ironic that, after I left the company, AAC would
eventually [as I saw from mag mastheads in 1992 and after] routinely have more
than one proofreader at a time, in-house apparently, though some or all of
these workers [who likely proofread for more than one mag title] would also be
an assistant editor for one particular magazine), there was this practical
oddity: Lois F., who reviewed all the timecards, started chipping away time off
my timecard (I was still paid per amount of time, though I was “full-time”).
How this happened was simple,
and I picked up on it with my keeping my own records of my time: whenever I was
within one-quarter an hour beyond a solid hour-amount—say, my total for a day
was six hours and six minutes—she rounded down for that day. The common-sense
way—and I am not even an accountant, but this seems like simple good
sense—would be to have this rule: If you are eight or more minutes above an
hour (but not at the full 15 minutes above), you got credit for an added
quarter-hour. If you were seven minutes or less above the hour, you were not
given the quarter-hour.
The chipping-away of my time
went on in the hot summer of 1991, when various people there got into weird
moods (by AAC standards) about various other things; and I thought (if I
recall) that maybe, at first, the time-chipping-away was a seasonal fluke, or
the like. But then I found over a few months that this system of rounding-down
went on consistently. After a while (by sometime in the fall, I think), I would
find that I had been docked a total of about three hours this way.
I was rather disturbed. This could
be said (retrospectively) to fall into the category—and (I speak here very
generally) I would encounter something of the same kind of questionable
business stuff at other places—where you would feel some practice was out of
sync and should be rectified, while it comported with numerous other things out
of sync at the place; but the fact that it went on made you feel as if you
would trigger an explosion, or bigger sleaze, if you made an issue of it,
however carefully. (My mini-series this past fall on CPG should convey this
sort of thing.)
I remember writing a cordial
memo about this, with my totaled amount and even some photocopies of relevant
timecards; I don’t remember if I brought it to Camille or to Lois first. I do
seem to recall a memo was addressed to Lois. I remember handling it as
tactfully as possible.
What I also distinctly remember
is that I was talking to my work ally Norma K. there about this matter; she was
sympathetic (and, of course, believed me). I wasn’t aware that Lois was within
earshot when I did this.
But sometime shortly after, Lois
called me into her office and then, distinctly peeved, laced into me for
bringing up the issue of the timecards. She showed an anger toward me, and
willingness to “face me down,” that she had never shown before. And it was as
if she could be conscious that the issue wasn’t that there was something
unjustifiable about the practice; but she addressed me as if I was making her
look (unacceptably) bad or questionable, or some such thing. (And her
implication was as if I shouldn’t make her look bad to such colleagues as Norma, which was odd, given that in no way was
Norma a superior of hers. Lois just didn’t want anything said to any others in the place about what was
happening with her tallying my timecards.)
And now the situation became one
where, in effect, you were intimidated (or facing a culture where “you had
better not try to cross certain lines, without consequences”) when trying to
resolve what seemed a simple-enough issue; and in effect, this made working
there in my last months there like being under the control of, or at the mercy
of, some kind of Mafia-like clique. (This, of course, was more consequentially
true of CPG.)
##
The way my time wound down there
in December 1991 I have spoken about in the 2016 AAC series cursorily, and of
course it was disturbing enough.
But ironically, when Camille
decreed—incidental to my being “laid off” from the company—that I go to Lois
and figure out what personal days and such I was owed, to be paid my last
check, Lois, with a strangely apologetic air, also included the three-or-so
hours that I had been gypped, over a period of months, with the
quarter-hour-shaving jiggery-pokery. She included the exact amount I had stated
in my memo on the subject.
Was I mistaken about what Lois
had been doing? Absolutely not. This was a matter of simple math, which she
eventually made up for, on her own.
And what really dignified my
position on the AAC quarter-hour issue was, when (after a tumultuous few weeks)
I got to AB in early 1992—and I was on a time clock again—the accountant there,
a nice enough man (who replaced an older man who was there a week or two when I
first got there), who himself had been laid off from a bigger company and
landed at AB, had a very simple practice: when your time beyond a solid hour
went up to eight minutes, you got the next quarter-hour; if it was seven
minutes or less, you didn’t get the next quarter-hour.
Very simple. And I never had
cause to say I was gypped time at AB.
Needless to say, the sleaze that
goes on in various quarters today is more high-tech.
##
End note 1. This series was first introduced here.
End note 2. This was also true even in her dealing with Jerry over
an issue of how much a woodworking-mag contributor was paid, ostensibly “going
to bat for” Lawrice, but not 100 percent. I don’t think I told this story last
year, and I may tell it down the road, apropos of something more substantive.
End note 3. I believe I commented on this in my AAC series last
year, but as one pithy example, Norma K., one of my allies there, said to me (with
sympathetic, wry irony) toward the end of my time there, if I wore a dress, I’d
get a better shake there.
