1970 Knitting In The Office

I didn’t think I had much in common with the other women. They sat all day at their metal desks, six lined up in the center of the room, three facing the walls, working at their adding machines and typewriters. I was in graduate school and after morning classes, worked afternoons in the university’s accounting department processing invoices. Each day I arrived during the lunch hour to find a big stack of invoices on my desk. My job was to take out the staples, put the invoice together with supporting papers in order with the invoice on top, staple the stack back together, add up the amount payable, stamp the invoice with a big rubber stamped form and fill in the blanks with the payee, invoice date, invoice number and amount to be paid. With slight variation, it was what we all did. Invoices were received in the mailroom; date stamped and assigned a number. Each of us was given part of the numerical sequence.

Promptly at 3:00 the yarn came out and for 15 minutes the women knit. I watched baby blankets, sweaters and one bikini take form. They knit every day during their morning and afternoon breaks. They knit at lunch too. They were cheerful and friendly and when one day I brought in yarn, they helped me. I began coming in earlier during the lunch hour to join them knitting before starting my work.

Most of them had returned to work after raising children and still went home at night to cook dinners and keep house for their husbands.

Thelma was the lead clerk. Her desk was a little separated from the others, off to one side, closer to the male supervisor who sat alone in a glassed in office in the corner of the large room. She went home at night to care for both her own elderly mother and her mother-in-law who both lived with her. She laughed about the burden of caring for the "mothers", the loads of laundry and special diets.

Marta crocheted blankets for the babies of nieces and nephews and told me about her big Mexican family and the successes of her husband and brothers. Jean knit a layette set for her daughter’s third child.

Merle, a divorcee who smoked at her desk, was the most flamboyant of the bunch. She was knitting the bikini and I enjoyed her rebellious humor. She was the first knitter I knew to hold the yarn in her left hand. Doing something just a little different from the norm appealed to me and I have been knitting continental since. One day Merle quit coming to work and one of the other women whispered she had been hospitalized with a nervous breakdown.

Jackie smoked too. She was different from the others, single, almost thirty. When the yarn came out, Jackie reached for the book she was reading and ignored the chit chat around her. She wore straight skirts and tailored shirts, unlike the soft skirts, blouses and cardigans worn by the older women. She had graduated from the university and processing invoices was not how she wanted to spend her life. She often called in sick or went home early with a headache. Many afternoons Thelma sorted through Jackie’s in-basket and gave much of its contents to me.

It was 1970, my consciousness was not yet raised. I didn’t question that the open teaching assistant position would automatically go to the male graduate student. I was glad to have found this part time job, but I knew Jackie was trapped.

I only spoke to our supervisor once. He was a pasty face young man who didn’t mix with the women. After I had been there a short while he called me into his glassed in office to tell me my work was adequate. Then he asked me if I liked the piped in music that played while we worked. He told me he arranged for it as studies showed music made employees more productive. I told him I preferred silence. I needed to tell him I didn't plan on staying.