Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (12)

 Perhaps because by the mid-1970s Joe still felt nostalgic for the days when he had shared joints with me, or often interacted with me, within the Richmond College Social Change Commune late 1960s hippie student scene, when most of us still assumed that a cultural, political and economic Revolution would happen in the USA in the 1970s, and, to him, I apparently still symbolized that time he felt some nostalgia for, in a friendly way Joe offered to drive me back to my slum apartment on the Brooklyn waterfront; before driving himself back to his mother's apartment in Queens in which he now lived?

Or it could be that, because he might not have yet realized how economically impoverished I still was in the mid-1970s and how much of a dump my Brooklyn apartment was, Joe might have been wanting to check out my apartment to see if it could possibly be a hipper place for him to live than was his mother's apartment in Queens, perhaps?

So many decades later, I no longer can recall much of the conversation we had while Joe shared a joint with me as he drove from Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and towards my apartment near the Battery Tunnel entrance from Brooklyn, along the streets I directed him to take. But what I do recall is that in our conversation I made the observation that "in the Sixties, we learned that the System was morally corrupt, when it failed to stop its endless war in Vietnam, despite all the the student protests. And in the 1970s, we've learned that the System in the USA can no longer provide automatic economic affluence for most of the working-class people who went to college in the Sixties, after they leave the campus.

"In the Sixties, the System hit us morally. And now, in the Seventies, the System is hitting most of us materially and showing us that having to work in a capitalist economic system when you're in your 20's is still a total drag for most people."

And I also recall that when I noted that some of us from Richmond College were getting closer to reaching the age of 30, after which it would be unlikely that they would be able to do much more to change the world, Joe looked a bit uncomfortable, since he was a few years closer to reaching 30 than I was at that time.

After Joe's car arrived in front of the slum apartment building in which I lived, he expressed an interest in checking out where I lived. So I invited him to park his car and come inside with me.

And once inside, Joe looked around the apartment, seemed to notice how little furniture I owned and commented: "Well, at least you have a lot of space in this apartment." And, apparently quickly concluding there was no way he would ever consider moving from his mother's apartment into my apartment as a roommate paying a cheap rent, instead of continuing to sleep rent-free in his mother's rent-stabilized apartment, while living in his car the rest of the time when not at work.

As a recovered heroin addict, Joe was then getting paid to work at some kind of healthcare facility on Staten Island in the daytime, on Monday through Friday, as a drug counselor. And a few weeks after I bumped into Joe at the Judy Collins concert at South Seaport I was surprised when, early on a Friday evening after work, he and another recovered heroin addict , who was also now being paid to work at the same health care facility where Joe worked, knocked on my door and invited me to hop in the car of Joe's friend that was parked on the street outside.

It turned out that Joe and his co-worker had been "invited" by one of the yuppie male social worker professionals, who also worked at the Staten Island health care facility where they worked, to, if they felt like spending part of their weekend in the Catskill Mountains, stop by at a summer house in the country, which their yuppie workplace colleague had apparently inherited from his parents (after they retired and likely moved then to Florida).

So on this particular Friday night, Joe and his co-worker were driving up to this country house near Liberty, New York, and Joe, perhaps because he had felt sorry for me when he had visited the apartment I lived in and realized how economically impoverished I now was, decided that he'd offer me the opportunity of also getting out of the city during that hot summer weekend.

Not having previously planned to do much alone in my apartment in the evening after work at Travelers Aid-ISS on that Friday or on the upcoming Saturday or Sunday, except maybe go to Coney Island's beach, perhaps, I quickly followed Joe out of the slum apartment in which I slept in and hopped in the car of Joe's co-worker, who was driving; and then sat down in the back seat, next to the brother of Joe's co-worker; who was a tall white guy who lived with Joe's coo-worker.

As I later learned, the older brother of Joe's co-worker had worked as a bouncer in some Brooklyn bar, before later, when in his early 20's, becoming eligible for a disability welfare payment, apparently due to either previous drug use causing him to flip out and then being labeled "mentally disable" or "slow-learning; and therefore not required to do work from 9-to-5, despite still being able-bodied.

By the time I met the brother of Joe's co-worker, though, he considered himself now able to do some kind of 9-to-5 manual work , if required to do so. But somehow, despite having indicated to the government agency which had initially certified him as disabled, that he could now work 9-to-5, because of some bureaucratic mistake by the government agency, disability check payments were still being mailed to him--even 5 years after he had indicated to it he felt able to work.

So when, apparently after attempting a second time a few years later to again indicate that he was able to work 9-to-5, the government's disability checks still kept arriving in the mail, the brother of Joe's co-worker then, just shrugged, and decided he might as well just keep living off his disability check payments; and, rather than spending his days or evenings working at a dead-end job, just spend his days and evenings at home in his apartment smoking pot, listening to vinyl records or watching television shows, in-between preparing his own meals to eat.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (6)

The fourth Travelers Aid-International Social Services [ISS] social workers whose dictaphone tapes I helped transcribe was a friendly and sweet Japanese woman, named Sato, who seemed to be in her 40s, and who lived alone in a small high-rise Midtown Manhattan apartment building, within walking distance from the Travelers Aid-ISS office in which she worked. And of the four social workers at Travelers Aid-ISS for whom I transcribed dictated tapes, Sato was the one who, by far, produced the most dictaphone tapes to be transcribed each week.

Unlike the two U.S.-born social workers and the Scandinavian-born social worker, Sato apparently spent nearly every minute of her 8-hours in her office dictating her case histories into the dictaphone as rapidly as possible.

So, although the two U.S.-born and the Scandinavian-born social workers at Travelers Aid-ISS provided the dictaphone-typist pool's basked with an adequate amount of work to be typed for what the social workers were being paid to do and completed all the work that Travelers Aid-ISS required and expected them to do, if one ever compared the amount of work they did during a workweek with the amount of work Sato produced, one might mistakenly have concuded that the U.S.-born and Scandinavian-born social workers were "slackers."

Having grown up in Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and worked in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, before apparently arriving to work in Manhattan during the late 1960s or early 1970s, the work ethic and attitude to doing work that Sato had seemed to differ from the more leisure-oriented, more laid-back work ethic that had developed in both the social democratic societies of Scandinavia and in the then-affluent U.S. society during the first few decades of the post-World War II era.

But despite being a work-freak at Travelers Aid-ISS, Sato was the only Travelers Aid-ISS social worker who apparently felt some personal obligation to express her thanks for me being one of the dictaphone-typists who spent much of their worktime transcribing and typing up what she produced each week.

And for that reason, apparently, she surprised me in the office one workday and invited me to attend with her a classical music concert at Lincoln Center after work later in the week, for which she had purchased two tickets.

Given the age gap between the culturally-straight-looking dressed Sato and me in the 1970s, and the fact that I had never previously felt that Sato was particularly interested in getting to know me outside of work, I did not regard Sato's invitation to attend a Lincoln Center music concert with her as any kind of attempt to try to form some kind of out-of-work friendship or relationship with me.

And prior to Sato's invitation, I, myself, had not thought of her as someone I might be interested in getting to know better outside of the workplace office.

But, not wanting to risk making Sato feel embarrassed that she had gone out of her way to invite me to attend a Lincoln Center classical music concert with her, I agreed, with a thankful smile on my face, to join her at the concert.

So many years later, I no longer can recall which classical music composer was being played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lincoln Center concert that I attended with Sato.

But what I do recall more is that when Sato treated me to some dinner in her Midtown Manhattan high-rise apartment, prior to the concert, we conversed about U.S. foreign policy in Asia and U.S.-Japanese foreign relations. And Sato was surprised that I was so critical of U.S. foreign policy, historically, in Asia and had some understanding of why, both before and after World War II, the Japanese people had had some legitimate grievances about U.S. government foreign policy in relation to Japan, that the U.S. government had unwisely ignored.

 And Sato also seemed surprised to hear me mention that I thought the Truman administration should not have ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, especially because, prior to August 1945, the Japanese government has already indicated to some Soviet Union diplomats that it was interested in negotiating an end to its WWII military conflict with the U.S. government.

In addition to then being interested in befriending me because I now also seemed more sympathetic to and understanding of Japanese people than the other people who had grown-up in the USA after World War II whom she had meet while living and working in the USA, my impression was that, being lonely in New York City in the mid-1970s, Sato also felt that, possibly, I could be a younger person with whom she could develop a friendship, similar to one that she might have had in Japan with a nephew who might have been in his 20s, like I then was.

But, despite recalling that I exchanged some public library books which examined World War II history in the Pacific ocean area, from a viewpoint that was critical of some U.S. government foreign policy and military decisions (like the decisions to firebomb Tokyo and drop the A-bombs on people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), while in Sato's apartment,, I  no longer recall the content of any of the conversations inside Sato's apartment, that occurred before I eventually left my job at Travelers Aid-ISS and never saw Sato agaon.

In retrospect, I probably should have attempted to keep up my acquaintance with Sato, even after I no longer was transcribing her dictaphone tapes at Travelers Aid-ISS, because her kind and sensitive personality did cause me to feel some emotional fondness for her and Sato seemed to like me.

But, given the age gap between us, and the fact that she lived in a high-rise apartment in Midtown Manhattan and I lived in a slum apartment in Brooklyn's Red Hook section, my conclusion in the mid-1970s was that our generational difference and different economic class situation meant that it wasn't logical for me to try to keep in contact with Sato, once I was no longer working at the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace.  

 

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (5)

 One of the Travelers Aid-ISS social workers whose tapes of social or case histories and correspondence I would sometimes transcribe and type-up during my work day was a culturally-straight-looking white woman who seemed to be in her 40's, wore glasses all the time and was someone whom most men at that time would likely have considered not particularly attractive on either a physical or personality level.

So many decades later, I can't recall ever having exchanged more than a few words with her, whenever she appeared near my desk to either drop a tape to be transcribed in a basked or to pick up a typed transcription of one of her tapes, during the time I worked at Travelers Aid-International Social Services [ISS].

All that I recall about this particular social workers is that, despite being a conventionally married woman, her husband was then working in some southern U.S. city, Monday to Friday, while she worked in Manhattan at Travelers Aid-ISS, Monday to Friday. And apparently, the only time they slept together as husband and wife was when her husband would fly up to New York City for the weekend or when she would fly down South for the weekend.

And I remember thinking that it seemed that she and her husband's apparent desire to have a more affluent and conventional middle-class standard of living had led them to develop the kind of long-distance marriage relationship that most women I had previously known would not have found very emotionally or sexually satisfying.

The second Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, for whom I helped transcribe tapes and type-up social and case histories, was a more culturally-hip-looking white woman with shortly-cut dark brown hair, who seemed to be in her early 30's, whom most men at that time would have likely considered physically attractive and "pretty."

But although this woman social worker was the only woman in the Travelers Aid-ISS office who then wore a pants suit, rather than a dress or shirt, to work, she never indicated any interest in ever chatting with either me or any of the other transcription-typists, when she either dropped her tapes into the transcription-typist pool baskets or picked up the typed pages of her dictations that we all produced for her.

Apparently, she then had either a husband or a boyfriend. But since I can't recall ever exchanging any words with her, there's really nothing else I can now recall about her, so many decades later.

The third Travelers Aid-ISS social worker for whom I transcribed tapes was a white woman, with light brown hair, from some Scandinavian country, who seemed to be in her 40's, whom most men at that time would likely have still considered "pretty" and physically attractive. Apparently, she had ended up working in the USA for Travelers Aid-ISS in the 1970s because she had married a white middle-class or upper middle-class man from the USA, whom she had met in Europe after World War II who wished to bring her back with him to live in the USA as his wife.

After having some children and raising them at home while her husband went to work during the 1950s and 1960s, this social worker from Scandinavia, who still spoke English with a slight Scandinavian accent, had returned to the work world in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Although the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker from Scandinavia always came to work in the office wearing a dress or skirt and blouse, rather than slacks or a pants suit, and still used lipstick and makeup in the mid-1970s, she was still the only other person in the Travelers Aid-ISS office who then seemed to be some kind of a socialist in her political beliefs other than myself. Probably because she had grown up within a social democratic-led Scandinavian country and because her parents had likely voted Social Democratic party candidates and raised her to be a socialist in her political views?

Also perhaps because, besides being personally happy with her life and family situation in the USA, she was a socialist, the Travelers Aid-ISS social worker from Scandinavia was the only social worker there who noticed I likely would then have preferred to be earning my economic survival money by having a job other than the dictaphone-transcriptionist/typing job I had in the Travelers Aid-ISS office?

Because a month or two after I had been working at Travelers Aid-ISS and, as my hair grew longer, I had begun to reveal myself as being some sort of a hippie-freak, she stopped by my work desk and suggested to me, in a friendly, slightly Scandinavian accent, that I look into the possibility of trying to get some work during the summer on one of the New England-based fishing boats, that she had learned were looking to hire some men, like myself, who were in their 20's, that summer.

Although I expressed my thanks for her thoughtful suggestion and admitted that a job on a New England-based fishing boat for the summer would, indeed, be considered by me to be a more interesting work world situation than the job I then had at Travelers Aid-ISS, I also indicated that I was still reluctant to yet move out of New York City in the mid-1970s and give up my relatively low-rent apartment.

But, aside from having this particular conversation with this third Travelers Aid-ISS social worker, whose dictated tapes I helped transcribe, about possible job openings on New England-based fishing boats in the mid-1970s, I don't recall anything more about this social worker from Scandinavia. 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (3)

The last of the three other dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists working in the Travelers Aid-ISS dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist pool was also another woman in her 20's who apparently had also moved to New York to find office work, from some other city or town in the USA.

But, unlike the white culturally-straight woman from Scranton, PA., she was a short-haired woman of Native American background, who likely would have been considered neither physically unattractive nor physically attractive by most men of her age in that decade. But her sarcastic way of relating to men like myself in the office, whenever she responded to some remarks she had had heard me make (in the rare general office conversation that happened during the few times when the baskets weren't overload with tapes of case histories and social worker correspondence to be transcribed), seemed to indicate, though, that she distrusted men for some reason; and that she was more personally unhappy with her current personal life situation, in general, than any of the other women workers in the office.

Yet after a few weeks of occasionally chatting with the woman of Native American background and realizing that (despite her identifying herself as a Native American who seemed to resent the fact that Native Americans were still being discriminated against in the USA in the 1970s), she wasn't into being a supporter of the American Indian Movement [AIM] or any other liberation movement in the USA or elsewhere and also seemed too self-centered in her personality, I concluded that, even if I had felt an interest in asking her out to lunch for a date, it was likely that she would feel there was no real basis for socializing with me outside of the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace office.

The only other office workers who did some typing that I can recall from my days working at Travelers Aid-ISS were two typists sent in from a temp agency; after the pile of ISS social worker reports and correspondence in the dictaphone-typist pool's basked which needed to be transcribed or typed grew so high that the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel director needed to call in a request for some temps to the temp agency she sometimes used to obtain temp workers.

One of the temp typists was a white man who seemed to be in his late 40s or early 50s, with slightly-graying hair, whose temp assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS lasted for about three or four weeks. He apparently lived rent-free in a residential building somewhere in Manhattan's midtown or upper east side, which he had inherited from his parents, whose family had purchased the small brownstone building before the neighborhood's block had turned into a white upper and white upper-class residential neighborhood.

So prior to registering with the temp agency which assigned him to work temp at Travelers Aid-ISS, he didn't seem to have felt much economic pressure to find himself a straight 9-to-5 permanent job; perhaps because, prior to the post-1969 economic recession deepening in New York City by the mid-1970s, he may have possibly been able to obtain money by renting out one of the follors of the brownstone he had inherited.

But apparently the impact of New York City's economic decline in the early 1970s was being felt enough by him so, despite his rent-free personal situation, he still felt the need to pick up some extra money by doing temp work?

The late 40 to early 50-year-old white male temp typist at Travelers Aid-ISS had a straight-looking short haircut and was beardless. But although he didn't seem artistic-oriented, interested in current events and the 1970s U.S. and world political scene or intellectual, and did seem non-rebellious, after his first day as a temp worker at Travelers Aid-ISS, he no longer came to work dressed in a suit and tie. And, like me, he just came to work dressed more casually, wearing neither a tie nor a sport jacket.

When I noticed the pile of typing to be done inside our dictaphone typist office pool's basket was starting to increase, I advised this white male typist in his late 40s or 50s to try to stretch out the length of his temp assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS by working more slowly. But although he had hoped to collect more temp agency paychecks from his Travelers Aid-ISS temp job for a few weeks longer, he apparently was still too new at working at temp jobs to take my advice; and once there was no more work for the temp to do at Travelers Aid-ISS he disapppeared from the scene, after about three or four weeks.

The second temp office worker who appeared at the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace while I worked there was a tall Black woman with an Afro hairstyle, and a gold tooth in her mouth, who lived in a Harlem apartment.

But after only one week working on her temp assignment at the Travelers Aid-ISS office, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager signed her temp time sheet on Friday afternoon and told her that the temp assignment had ended and she would no longer be needed to work at Travelers Aid-ISS in the following weel.

Because I had chatted with the African-American woman temp a few times during the wook in the office, she started to chat with me on the Manhattan street after we left the East Side building in which the Travelers Aid-ISS office was located, and walked towards the different subway stop stations we used to commute home.

Apparently, the Travelers Aid-ISS white female personnel manager had accused her of taking too much time on her breaks and lunch hours and not working fast enough. But the African-American woman temp in her late 20s or early 30s felt the real reason her temp assignment at the Travelers Aid-ISS was ending was because of racial bias; and she expressed anger at the assignment ending.

I agreed with her that, since this particular Travelers Aid-ISS workplace didn't seem to employ any Black clerical workers (except maybe the office worker who was the mailroom clerk) or any Black social workers in the 1970s, it was likely that the white middle-class female personnel manager's racial bias had led to the temp job assignment ending.

But, after stopping to converse with each other on the street for about 10 minutes, we both concluded that, unless her temp agency stopped giving her new assignments because Travelers Aid-ISS had ended her assignment after just one week, it made more economic sense for her to just call the temp agency and get assigned to report to a different workplace during the following week. Since there was a possibility that, in the short-run,  if she complained now to her temp agency about Travelers Aid-ISS's racial bias, she would then be seen as a "troublemaker by her temp agency; and the temp agency, itself, would start going out of its way, in a racially-biased way, to avoid giving her temp work assignments with any of the temp agency's other clients.

After our 10-minute sidewalk chat, I felt somewhat physically and intellectually attracted to the African-American temp woman worker whose assignment at Travelers Aid-ISS had just ended. But, not knowing whether or not she was already now involved in a relationship with another person, not wanting to use the fact that I had provided a sympathetic ear for her to vent her anger at the temp assignment ending so suddenly at Travelers Aid-ISS as a means of getting her inclined to feel willing to exchange phone numbers with me, and not feeling any vibe from her indicating she wanted me to ask her out for a date, I didn't ask her for one.

So although I felt attracted to her somewhat, I quickly decided that she would likely consider it illogical if I said anything more to her other than just wishing her luck, before we went our separate ways.

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (2)

 After so many decades later, I now can only visualize slightly the dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist area of the Travelers Aid-International Social Service [ISS]'s two-floored office in the many-floored East Side Midtown Manhattan skyscraper building, in which I spent most of my workday; or the basement area of the building, to where I would take the elevator down once in the morning and once in the afternoon. And there spend my 15-minute morning and 15-minute afternoon coffee breaks away from both the desk I worked at and from the three or four co-workers who were also working as dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists, at desks within a few feet of me.

What I can still remember and visualize a bit more than how the work space area and the basement setting looked are some other workers in the Travelers Aid-ISS dictaphone typist/transcriptionist pool, as well as the four ISS social workers whose dictation tapes I spent transcribing each workday.

Of the two dictaphone-typist/transcriptionists whose work desks, electric typewriters and dictaphone machines were nearest to my work desk, one was a white, culturally straight-looking woman, who always wore a dress to work each day and who seemed to be in her early or mid-50s. Occasionally, she conversed with me in a friendly way at the beginning and end of the workday; and during the rare times in the workday when there wasn't some social workers's dictation tape--of a prospective adoptive child's case history and report on the suitability of the prospective adoptive parents--or some social worker's correspondence, that needed to be transcribed and typed-up.

Although she was a liberal Democrat, New York Times newspaper reader who, by the 1970s was anti-Vietnam War as well as anti-Nixon, and didn't seem less friendly towards me, after I had let my beard and hair grow long again and revealed that, despite looking culturally straight when initially hired, I was, in actuality, some kind of hippy-freak guy in his 20s, I felt we had little common intellectual interests.

And since, besides not feeling, like I did, that working 9-to-5 as a dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist job under the U.S. capitalist economic system was a form of wage slavery, she was also a woman to whom I wasn't physically attracted; perhaps because she was the then-older white woman that most men at that time would likely have considered neither "pretty" nor "ugly", but just "plain-looking."?

The other dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist whose work desk was closest to my work desk was a young white woman with black hair, in her 20s, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who possessed a face that most men would have then considered to be "pretty". And I might have come to be physically attracted to her, despite her still coming to work each day still only wearing either a skirt or a dress and never slacks or jeans, if she had indicated during the workday that she was interested in getting to know me or that she shared any of my values, beliefs, intellectual interests or political/philosophical views.

But by the end of the first week, my impression was that this white co-worker in her early 20s had quickly decided that I wasn't someone she wanted to know better, because she already had a boyfriend who was still living in Scranton; and, while now living alone in New York City, the only kind of men then in their 20s she would likely want to know better would be the culturally straight white business-oriented executive or future executive types or male professionals, who were by then earning more money than she or I then earned as dictaphone-typists/transcriptionists. And only white men who would also eventually be interested in marrying her, having children and supporting her, by filling some kind of job slot that produced a weekly salary check large enough for her  to be able to escape from the 9-to-5 office work world she found dull; so that she  would be able to just be a stay-at-home mother raising children, like her own mother had been.

So, many decades later, I can't recall having any particular conversations with this particular culturally-straight white co-worker in her 20s from Scranton, Pennsylvania during the whole time I worked at Travelers Aid-International Social Services in the mid-1970s.

 

Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited: (1)

 After spending three or four days visiting a woman friend in the Midwest, who was then working for some Midwest campus town lawyer as a clerk-typist, I eventually hitched a ride with a white, short-haired, long-distance truck driver, who seemed to be in his 50s, at a break-down lane near one of the Ohio Turnpike entrances.

And the truck driver drove all night with me sitting next to him and keeping him awake by conversing with each other about our respective lives, his oppressive working conditions and the state of U.S. society in the mid-1970s--until we reached the unloading dock of a wholesaler in central Brooklyn, who resold meat and chicken to New York City supermarkets.

At the Brooklyn meat and chicken wholesaler's unloading dock, I ended up--in exchange for my free ride--unloading all the boxes of meat and chickens the truck driver had brought in his truck to Brooklyn from his Omaha, Nebraska pick-up point, while the truck driver stood and watched me unload his cargo for him, seeming to be grateful that he wouldn't have to risk hurting his aging back while unloading, himself, all of the heavy boxes which he had delivered.

And, afterwards, I got on a subway train and returned back to my slum apartment in Red Hook, by the Brooklyn waterfront, in late morning and quickly fell asleep for the rest of the day.

But by the next following Sunday, I had given myself a haircut, shaved off my beard and dug a thrown-out classified "Want Ads" section of that Sunday's New York Times newspaper out of one of the on-the-street-sidewalk garbage pails on Court Street in Brooklyn; because I needed to find a new 9-to-5 wage-slave job situation again, in order to obtain the money for the next month's rent.

Prior to late 1974--when the Wall Street bankers started to intensify their effort to push the City of New York's municipal government's eventual Fall 1975 drift into bankruptcy and subsequent cuts in NYC government city services, mass layoffs of NYC government workers, increases in NYC subway and bus fares and ending of free tuition for CUNY matriculated college students residing in NYC--a white male office worker could still get hired for some kind of permanent clerk-typist-related private corporate sector job, rather than just for a temp clerk-typist-related private corporate sector job. As long as you were still in your 20s, dressed-up in a suit and tie for your job interview, had short-hair and no beard, and falsely indicated on your job application that you were only a "high school graduate with a few years of college," rather than indicating that you actually were a college graduate with a B.A. in the liberal arts.

So when I noticed a want-ad in the Sunday New York Times classified want-ad section, which indicated that the Manhattan office of the Travelers Aid-International Social Services  [ISS] was advertising an available permanent job position opening for a dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist, I telephoned the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel office early Monday morning, from a Manhattan telephone booth inside Grand Central Station, to get a job interview at its Midtown Manhattan eastside office arranged later that same day.

And when I telephoned the following day, on Tuesday, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager who had interviewed me the day before, to ask if Travelers Aid-ISS had decided to hire me for the permanent job position I had been interviewed for, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager, in a friendly way, informed me that I was hired and should report for work on the following Monday.

The Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager who hired me so quickly was a culturally straight-looking white woman who seemed to be in her mid-30s and whom most men would likely have considered neither particularly unattractive nor particularly attractive on a physical level.

But after I demonstrated that I could then type over 60 words per minute with no errors on my 5-minute typing test, and indicated that I had had some previous experience working as a dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist for a few months at one of the Downtown Manhattan courtrooms, transcribing probation/social worker reports, the Travelers Aid-ISS personnel manager related to me in an even friendlier way and appeared eager to hire me by the end of the interview; even without taking the time to check the references or accuracy of what I had written on the job application she had had me fill out, before I took the typing test.

Perhaps because I was either the first applicant she had interviewed for the dictaphone-typist/transcriptionist position and/or the first applicant for the permanent job position who had passed the the typing test and had some previous experience as a dictaphone-typist?

Or perhaps because I was not only the first qualified applicant she had interview, but was also an office work job applicant in the mid-1970s who may have then still possessed some "white skin privilege" in NYC, in relation to how some NYC business and non-profit organization personnel departments then still decided which people to hire as their office workers? (Despite all the then post-1970 U.S. liberal Establishment's rhetorical claims about how purportedly committed U.S. corporations and non-profit organizations were to implementing "affirmative action" programs in the1970s that would finally eliminate racial discrimination against Black office workers and Black professional white collar workers in their hiring practices by the and of the 1970s.)