By Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
U. S. employers first hired women as office workers in significant numbers after 1870. Men continued to fill office jobs after 1870 but women took the largest share of clerical jobs. In 1900, 92.7% of women clerical workers were single. It was clearly viewed as transitory employment.
One woman interviewed in the 1930s wrote: “I’m married and the next day I was out of a job…They were going to let somebody go… If I was married, then I’m the one who was SUPPOSEDLY being supported by my husband, so I didn’t need the job as much as somebody else. Jobs at that time were because you needed them.”
The typical office of the early 1900s bore little resemblance to Bob Cratchit’s office of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol of the 1840s. Office workers sat in desks arranged in long parallel rows in a “hygienic” setting with electric lamps, large windows, and a supervisor whose only job was to watch his workers and increase productivity.
Initially, employers had to address the fears of many who argued that the hiring of female clericals would destroy the family or a woman’s femineity.
Anne Helen Petersen wrote an article titled, “Are You Sure You Want To Go Back to The Office?” She says that “Many companies are preparing to bring employees back in the spring or summer, depending on how fast the vaccines roll out.”
Juliette Kayyem says, “The corporate culture that so many employers prize is based on a level of interaction that will not be regained simply by being in the same building.” Shown below is a poem that explores the challenges of secretarial work and the return to the office of 2021:
I REMEMBER:
The office receptionist, “deceptionist,” and gatekeeper. The secretary who when asked by her employer to get his broker on the phone, replies, “stock” or “pawn?”
Dehumanized women workers who were once referred to as “office wives” or decorative “girl Fridays.” Women who learned to type on Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing…and those who banged away on their I.B.M Selectric. Those who recall Shire Hite, who used an advertising campaign with the tagline, “The Typewriter That’s So Smart, She Doesn’t Have to Be.”
Women like Karen Nussbaum and Ellen Cassedy, who founded 9 to 5, a new organization for women office workers.
“Plug and play” new hires who don’t need any training. Cold calling individuals - Smilin’ and dialin.’
“Transitioned,” “severed,” “surplussed,” “non-retained” and “deselected” employees fired via Zoom.
Nine to Fivers who remember when “a secretary’s pad was to write in, not spend the night in.”
“Unkeyboardinated” - those unable to type without repeatedly making mistakes.
Secretaries who worked when the 3 R’s represented (the) Royal [typewriter] Road to Romance.
Those who haven’t learned that “a typo can mean the difference between hired and fired.”
Happy office people, too—the Joy Polloi—who are assisted by robots named Robot Redford, Archie Bumper, and Beeping Tom. The recipient of office jokes: “Today is Administrative Professionals Week. Take yours to lunch—take mine, too.”
Workers who ask, “Can I stir fry an idea in your thinkwok”?
And I REMEMBER the “well seasoned” people who can relate to this Oct. 16, 1966, New York Times job ad: Secretary needed. Brite-eyed lassie to work in a “one-girl” office in the Empire State Building.
―MARJORIE GOTTLIEB WOLFE is a retired business educator and author of two books on Yiddish. She will be giving a Zoom talk on Feb. 17, at 1 p.m. on “The 3 B’s: Brooklyn, (the) Bronx, and the Bungalows of Rockaway Beach.” Contact the Friedberg JCC in Oceanside, N.Y. for details.