Sean Hannity Show - On the Job - A Job for Life: One woman's journey from typist and switchboard operator to helping run the American Psychiatric Association

May 31, 2017 - Sean Hannity Show

15:10

On the Job - A Job for Life: One woman's journey from typist and switchboard operator to helping run the American Psychiatric Association

One of public radio's premier producers finds out secrets from her mother's career. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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	This is an iHeart Podcast.
	This is an iHeart Podcast.
	Women make the world go round.
	You know, they're they're sure that their bosses answer all their phone calls and you know, answer their mail, and that there's enough coffee in the in the office.
	Once upon a time, that's how it was in the American office, as any viewer of TV's madmen could tell you.
	On this edition of On the Job, From Hired to Retired, we have a profile of Carol Davis and want to tell you right off the bat that our reporter, Katie Davis, is Carol's daughter.
	She saw her mom rise from typist and switchboard operator to having one of the most important jobs in her profession.
	Her story in a moment.
	First, a word about express employment professionals.
	Over the past 34 years, Express Employment Professionals has put millions of people to work in meaningful and fulfilling jobs and careers.
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	Job hopping is what people do these days.
	Many will have four different jobs in just the first decade out of college.
	So let's consider a woman who worked at the same place for 39 years.
	Carol Davis is 79 now.
	She started her job in the 1960s, a time when the number of women in the workforce was increasing, even though their ranks were very thin in management and in many professions.
	Here's Katie Davis.
	And Carol Davis pulls into the driveway of her old office.
	It was a private home and then converted into the American Psychiatric Association.
	Carol Davis gets out of the car and points up to the second floor.
	And that up there, and to the right of the entrance was my office.
	The big the they have these big windows, and each window has a little balcony on it.
	And come around here and I'll show you Dr. Barton's office.
	Dr. Walter Barton.
	I grew up hearing that name.
	My mother's boss was a teacher when she really needed one.
	She learned about psychiatry, ethics, and that sometimes you just have to do things yourself, like the day Dr. Barton noticed the windows were dirty.
	And right up there is where he stood on the balcony and washed the windows.
	He didn't ask Carol Davis to do it.
	He just got out there, suit and all.
	And you're lucky, she says, if you get one boss like him once in your career, just once.
	Carol says she needed guidance when she arrived at the APA in 1963.
	She was recently divorced, and her husband had custody of us kids.
	Her parents in Weirton, West Virginia, wanted her to come back to live in the steel town, and they would take care of everything, including a house.
	But she knew if she ever wanted her kids back, she had to be able to support herself.
	And starting on the ground floor was just fine.
	I wasn't really uh equipped to do much, to tell you the truth.
	I think I typed 20 words a minute, not well.
	You know, I worked in some bars and I worked at, you know, as a r uh waitress, and but you know, that doesn't equip you for much.
	Then I went on an interview with uh APA, American Psychiatric.
	And uh Joe Turgeon interviewed me.
	And basically, you know, I just said I don't really do too much, but I'd love to have this job.
	And so he hired me.
	Based on, I guess, a whole lot of trust, and maybe he liked me, I don't know.
	But anyway, it was my first job there.
	I don't do too much, but I'd love to have this job.
	Imagine saying that in an interview.
	I can see my mom flashing her wide smile, willing her way into the American Psychiatric Association.
	For herself and for us kids.
	Carol tells me all this sitting in her blue chair in the house she now owns.
	We came to live with her five years after she got that first job.
	Folk art fills the wall, a silk screen of a blue dog and painted slate from New Orleans.
	She sits in that chair and reads two newspapers every day, finishes two crossword puzzles, and plays bridge.
	She lives on her pension and social security, and all of it started at the American Psychiatric Association.
	I don't know that I had a job title exactly, but I ordered the toilet paper and I ordered the paper towels and I ordered the paper and you know the stencils, all the things that people needed to work.
	What did you need stencils for?
	Stencils.
	That's how you duplicated things.
	This is pre-Zerox days.
	If you wanted to like produce a 10-page report, you had to type 10 pages of stencils.
	And then you had to correct them if you made a mistake, which was in and of itself unbelievable.
	Correcting a stencil, you got purple all over yourself.
	So that's what I did.
	And I also learned how to relieve on the switchboard.
	I had never even seen a switchboard, let alone run one for God's sake.
	And let me tell you, it was difficult.
	I am not the most mechanical person in the world.
	And learning to push the plug in the right hole to connect somebody sometimes often eluded me, and I cut people off, and they would get mad and they would call down or come down and say, You cut me off.
	I'd say, Well, I'm learning, I'm learning, please, I'm learning.
	Anyway, I learned, but it was a real chore.
	Uh you know, I that's why I think one of the things that I used to enjoy when Lily Tomlin did uh Ernestine was because that's how I felt.
	Oh, anyway, so that was my job.
	So that was my job.
	It was work that women often did in the early 1960s.
	It was an association of men, let's face it.
	I mean, there were very few women psychiatrists.
	There were some, uh, but a very small number.
	But it was that they, you know, were just super to me.
	I can't tell you.
	You know, it was just so easy to work here because the men were not chauvinist pigs.
	And if they were, I didn't recognize it in those days.
	You know, I mean, it was a good job, and I loved it, and you know, they always treated me with a great deal of respect, and and let me tell you, I was a puppy who knew nothing.
	It was a good place.
	We're going to take a short pause now, and when we come back, I'll talk to Carol Davis about her best years in her job and about the time she stood up for herself when the American Psychiatric Association tried to push her out.
	You're listening to On the Job from Hired to Retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals.
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	I'm Steve Mencher.
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	Welcome back to the second half of On the Job from Hired to Retired.
	I'm Katie Davis, and we're talking with my mom, Carol Davis, about her career with her lifetime employer.
	She took an entry-level job in 1963 and worked at the same place until she retired.
	At first, she knew very little about administrative work, so she stayed after 5 o'clock for tutorials about the operations manual and the constitution of the APA.
	She says, in a way, her lack Of experience made her a blank slate for learning how things were done there and for getting a promotion to work with the medical director, Dr. Barton.
	Up I went to, you know, the fancy offices that he had and um typed.
	That's all I did.
	I typed, and I remembered that.
	I went in and I said, Dr. Barton, do you have time to talk to me?
	He said, Well, of course, you know.
	I said, Dr. Barton, I I took this job, but you told me that I wasn't gonna have to type all day, and that's all I do.
	And he said, Oh, dear.
	Well, you learn other things to do.
	And that was the end of the discussion.
	Um so I learned other things to do.
	That was kind of a brave thing to do.
	You hadn't been working for him that long.
	You went right up and talked to him.
	Well, that's who he was.
	His door was always open, it never was closed, ever, ever.
	You know.
	And once when I was I sat outside his office and I decided that I hadn't had a raise and I needed a little more money, and um, so I thought, well, I'll look for a job.
	So on my lunch hour, I was a sitting at my desk reading the one eds, and Dr. Barton's circling them, and Dr. Barton said, Are you looking for another job?
	And I said, Well, you know, I was thinking that maybe I could make more money, and he said, Oh, so I got a race.
	And that was the only time I ever did anything like that.
	I then I got regular raises from then on, and and I moved up in the job.
	So I eventually, you know, became his special assistant, and uh, you know, and did more, you know, but mostly I typed all day, even then, because he dictated.
	Ah, when someone would hear this, they might think, how could you love this place that much?
	You're just kind of uh doing a lot of typing.
	Because what you were doing was interesting.
	You know, it wasn't dull business, it was about psychiatric issues, it was about issues that were important to the day, you know, like the APA, you know, uh revising its manual when I was there, and so I was there when they decided that homosexuality was not a disease.
	It was a very exciting place to be.
	I learned an enormous amount.
	I learned an enormous amount about psychiatry, I read everything.
	I also got to work with Dr. Barton on ethics, which was a real wonderful thing, even though it was, you know, hard when people are unethical, but it was exciting to learn.
	I helped to write the first edition of the Principles of Medical Ethics.
	It was exciting.
	You know, not only that, but we got to play bridge at lunch.
	When Dr. Barton left the APA, he invited Carol to go with him and work at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
	Free tuition for us kids.
	She really wanted to go, but said no because she didn't want to uproot the family she had just remade.
	She continued to direct the ethics complaint process for patients and psychiatrists, making sure any breach of ethics was fully investigated.
	Later, though, Carol faced a different boss who reduced her responsibilities and took away her office.
	I thought my life was over.
	That's all I could think of.
	That there was not going to be anything I could do.
	My life was over.
	I was not an important person anymore.
	Uh but I was glad to leave because it was uncomfortable last couple of years.
	I had to sue the APA because my boss, the third medical director, really wanted to get rid of me and did everything but fire me, which he felt he couldn't do.
	So what I got out of the suit was I got to create my own job, which was nothing but doing the ethics, and that I would stay until I was 65, and then I would retire.
	And I wouldn't have a party.
	Everybody got a going-way party.
	Big going away parties.
	And I planned most of them.
	Yes, I did.
	And so I said, oh, I said, you've got to be kidding again.
	I'm not having a going-away party for what?
	And you know, it was fine.
	So I packed up my little box.
	And fortunately, because nobody knew anything about the ethics job but me, and I had tried really hard to train somebody, it's very complicated issue.
	I mean, you know, with lawyers and everything involved.
	Um, so I got to do some consulting for them.
	I was still plugged in to the ethics, which I loved.
	But I'll tell you, life goes on.
	It was wonderful.
	I could get up and drink my coffee and read the newspaper before I even brush my teeth.
	You know, and I um had time just to do things.
	So it was okay.
	It was okay.
	You've been listening to journalist Katie Davis interviewing her mom, Carol Davis.
	And that's all for this edition of On the Job from Hired to Retired from Express Employment Professionals.
	Find out more at ExpressPros.com.
	This podcast is produced by Steve Mencher from Mensch Media and Red Seat Ventures.
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	See you next time on the job.

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