Ain't I A Woman

I ran into a friend from school yesterday. She's now working at the office I used to work. While discussing the supervisor, she mentioned how much she now makes. It really didn't hit me until I got home that she was making almost twice the amount I did for half the work.

Granted I started working under unusual circumstances. I started working as an office clerk part-time for the original business owner. She didn't really have enough money to pay me properly, but I took the job to help her out. When she sold the business, I was the only one the new owner kept. One would think I would have gotten a raise once I was hired full-time. I didn't. I worked for the new owner for 2 months before I got a raise...to a whopping $7/hr.

Now, I would have tried to tough it out until the next raise and/or promotion if it hadn't been for the supervisor the owner hired. This woman was so foul-mouthed and crude it was ridiculous. That's not including her being lazy, constantly late, and the list goes on. I would open the office at 8, she'd show up at 9:15 and leave by 9:30. She may or may not come back in time for my lunch hour. Matter of fact, she pushed my lunch back from 12 to 1. During the hours she actually was there, she mainly hung on the phone, talking loudly during incredibly personal calls. I knew all her business, and I never asked for it.

Somehow during the 2 1/2 months I worked for the new owner, my position evolved fom office clerk to whipping girl. I was the one responsible for cleaning the office. I was the one responsible for cleaning the office bathroom (and I never used it). I was responsible for cleaning the back counters and microwave (again never used it). One day, the owner spilled some soup she'd microwaved on the counter. Instead of wiping the soup up with the paper towels she was standing next to; she called me from up front, where I was taking payments, to come to the back to clean-up her mess. I took her and the supervisor yelling at me for a glitch in the computer system that they should have been aware of more so than me. I put up with the two of them yelling at me because people went elsewhere because it took too long for the supervisor to respond with a quote when they called. The last straw for me was when the supervisor looked at me one Monday morning and asked "So have any wild hot sex over the weekend?"

The one time I tried to have a reasonable conversation with the owner (I never got a chance to make my complaints), she basically told me that if I wasn't happy I could leave. I told her she wasn't paying me enough to put up with the supervisor (I'd just gotten my whopping raise the week before). So I quit (I was kinda pissed since I was planning on quitting on MLK day, she pushed me out a couple of days early).

I know part of the problem was my looks. Just because I may be built like a "mammy" doesn't mean I am one. If I had been skinny and cute things would've been a lot better for me. If I'd been skinny and white...well, one can dream.

It just pisses me off to think of how they tried to work my (generous) butt off. Sometimes I thought the supervisor had something against me because I had a college degree. Who knows with that fool. But it really burns when I think of what I went through a few years ago, and this friend makes twice as much for less headache (I'm not even sure if she ever graduated from high school). That's a bitter pill to swallow. I wish the friend well, she is about to get another promotion. Congrats to her, she deserves it working with that fool.