THE NEW JOB... & other things (Part 100d)

We both tried to stay calm so as not to upset my grandfather. I knew Buddah lived with his parents and was a local. However, I didn’t have any idea where. Bags lived only a few streets away from my grandfather’s house so headed there. By then it was approaching 1pm. I knocked on the door and his mother answered. He was still in bed which told me that it must’ve been quite a party after I left. I asked if she knew where Buddah lived and she gave me the directions. Actually, he lived within minutes of where I lived and it was my next stop.

When his mother told me that he was off visiting an Army buddy I’m sure the look on my face was one of shock. I’d seen him just about 12 hours earlier. I tried not to say something to get him in trouble with his mother and asked when he’d left. Her answer was that he left at noon and was due back for supper. There wasn’t much I could say but I left with some private thoughts.

We were eating our supper when the phone rang. It was Edith and she was calling from my grandfather’s house to tell me that Jan had shown up. She didn’t go into detail but said that Jan was OK and was apologetic. She said that Jan told her that she’d gotten “involved”. Putting that together with what Buddah’s mother had told me I couldn’t help but smile.

I wasn’t looking forward to work on Monday but on my way I got to wondering what Stasia looked like, hoping for the best. I’d calculated that she was about 25 years old based on the “dirt” that both Alvin and Inez had fed me the previous week. However, I couldn’t help but think that in spite of her young age, compared to just about everybody else, and how unremarkable they all were she’d be unremarkable too.

I won’t say I was shocked but was pleasantly surprised when I walked in. I was one of the first to arrive (Alvin was always the first) and as I made the turn into the work area I saw an unfamiliar face. The best way to describe her was “innocent” looking. She almost looked lost just sitting there at her desk. A little later, from my desk, I took a good, close look at her without her knowing. Depending on where the light was coming from her hair went from brown to auburn and was down to her shoulder blades. It was straight and down to her shoulders and with bangs. (For those of you who saw the movie "Grease" and remember the character played by Olivia Newton John... Sandy... at the beginning of the movie and how she acted and wore her hair... that was how  Stasia's hair looked. (See picture.)  Remember, the movie story took place in the 60's)

About 5’7“, she was wearing a dress and I don’t remember it at all except that it “hung“ on her so that it was basically impossible to see her ”form“. I had to wait quite a while to see even the faintest smile. When she did I got the impression that she could possibly be considered cute. One thing I was looking for was to see how she was treated by the others since she was classified as an ”outsider“. Since she worked on the side with the officers of the bank there was little interaction with staff so it was hard to judge. I did witness one exchange with Mona in which she was definitely talked down to but, armed with the ”dirt“ that Alvin had given me about Mona, I sort of expected it. In the week and a day that I’d been there, after the original introduction, Mona hadn’t even acknowledged my presence. A real bitch!

It was the end of the week before I had a reason to talk with her. I was auditing the mortgage files and two of them were missing. Artie, the mortgage officer, was away from his desk and since Stasia was shared by all the officers I went to her to leave a message for him. Aside from looking up from her typing when I walked up she never looked me in the eyes. I think what puzzled me was that she was also the receptionist and had to deal with the public. It seemed to me that in the five years she’d been there she should’ve been over being shy.

The following week was more of the same treatment by just about everybody. However, at least Alvin was explaining why I was doing what I was doing which gave me a reason for the effort. The reality of it was that I was doing all his ”grunt“ work allowing him to, more or less, goof off. One other characteristic of Alvin had, by then, emerged. On top of everything else... he was neurotic. Examples: everything I touched had to go back in the exact same place as when I picked it up; whenever I started a project it had to be finished before leaving and I wasn’t to ask him a question when he was on his lunch hour.

I’d written about how old most of the equipment was but the classic was the adding machine I had to use. They had no electric adding machines at all but most were 7 column, hand cranked machines. Mine, because I had to deal in big numbers when I totaled all the ledger cards up, was a 10 column machine. The keyboard had 100 buttons and to make an entry I had to depress a separate button in each column for each number that I wanted to enter and then pull a crank handle. I’d never operated one and, in fact, had never seen one before starting at the bank, so it was slow going. All the accounts Alvin had started me auditing were relatively small and I managed to complete them before quitting time. But, the big one, all the savings accounts, was still to be tackled. It was a Wednesday when Alvin gave me that assignment. When I looked at all the ledger cards that had to be run I almost choked. By lunch time I knew I was in trouble as I was less than a third of the way through. I was getting faster though and decided to skip lunch in hopes of getting them done close to 5pm.

To be continued...