Racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism, anything Nazi and a boatload of other things have no place in my life.
– Sandra Bullock
At Grubmeyer’s, Inc., first thing Monday morning, that’s seven a.m., not a minute later, there’s a mandatory staff meeting. A hell of a way to start the week, some say. Getting a jump on their competitors is Grubby’s explanation. Proving management can force employees to arrive at such an ungodly hour seemed the main point.
Sheila thought free coffee and jelly donuts was the worst part because she was watching her weight.
One morning, Juan Martyn, Sheila’s immediate supervisor, announced the promotion of a male co-worker, one Chip Herman. Juan said this was the only promotion for their group this year. Times are tight.
After the meeting was over, Sheila went to Juan’s office and told him how disappointed she was. Juan was unmoved.
Sheila didn’t understand why she wasn’t promoted. When she’d had her review with Dick, her old boss, he felt she was very promotable. Apparently, Dick’s opinion didn’t swing much weight with Juan.
Sheila wanted to find out where she ranked. They say there’s no more ranking, but you know they must be keeping score somehow. She talked to Juan about the nature of the work she’d been given, about the work women in the group were given. She deserved to be promoted and she didn’t understand what was going on. Sheila needed some answers.
Since he was new as her supervisor, Juan didn’t have answers about where she ranked or why she wasn’t promoted. He said he’d work on getting that information and let her know what he found out. He listened to her concerns, but he didn’t say very much at all, to tell you the truth.
She felt like he was humoring her.
Juan had said, when he became their supervisor, he intended to have everyone work on all accounts. That was real important to him, he said. Important to Sheila, too. You have to be working on the big retail accounts to get the visibility you need for promotion. But he’d been supervising them since March and here it was July already and they hadn’t seen any changes at all. Sheila was concerned about that.
Sheila was concerned she was getting caught in the same cycle all over again. People telling her she’s doing great work, but not getting the accounts you need to get your name talked about, so you could be promoted. Sheila wanted to understand why Juan wasn’t following through on what he’d said.
If you are working on something important to the company, even work that needs to be done and needs to be done well, if it isn’t the most visible account, your name doesn’t get talked about. That’s a fact of life in the business world.
Any account, if you do quality work, should be reason enough to be promoted. But the only people that get talked about for promotion, they work on the Nordstrom account. That’s just how it seemed to Sheila. Chip Herman was promoted and he works on the Nordstrom account. When people talk about the exciting jobs, the important projects, they always talk about Nordstrom.
The women invariably get less visible accounts than the men.
Not fair.
The next day or the day after, it was the next day, Juan called Sheila into his office and he closed the door. He had spoken with Dick. Sheila had ranked in the top quarter of her category. Not bad.
Should have been higher, thought Sheila. She had problems with those rankings, she told him. They were not supported by her reviews with Dick or her annual performance reports. Sometimes she feels like she’s going in circles, she told Juan.
Sometimes Juan feels like he’s heard it all before, but he didn’t tell Sheila that. Juan talked about what she could do to improve her chances for promotion next year. It was his perception they have a lot of dead time in her group, which she took exception to. She told him she didn’t think he understood what they did or how they did it. There wasn’t, quote, dead time, unquote, like he was saying.
He said, well, in any event he wanted her to take those opportunities to seek out projects she thought would be high visibility and initiate them on her own.
Seize the day. He actually said that.
She told him she thought that was everybody’s responsibility, to do good work and save the company money. And saving the company money, of course, is high visibility. As her supervisor, she felt it was his responsibility to help her with those higher visibility projects that would lead to promotion, and to date he hadn’t done that. She was talking specifically about Nordstrom.
He told her that really wasn’t his fault because most of the Nordstrom projects Chip Herman gets are simply called up and given to him directly. She told Juan she had a hard time with that answer because he had stated it was his goal to have everyone work on all the different accounts. Juan should work with Nordstrom to make them understand what the goal was, and that didn’t seem to be happening.
And Juan said, okay, you know, that’s a good point.
Then he brought up the fact she was pursuing a master’s degree. He didn’t think a master’s had any benefit at all for promotability. In fact, there was no benefit whatsoever to the company, or to the goals of their work group, for her to continue to pursue her graduate degree. She couldn’t understand that, her degree had been endorsed by Dick. Why bring it up at all?
So Juan repeated himself, saying he didn’t believe pursuing that degree had any benefit to the company or the goals of the work group.
She was shocked and she was upset.
What? Really? She couldn’t believe her ears.
And he said, that’s how I feel.
At that point she was too upset to continue. Sheila told him she couldn’t talk anymore and she left the room.
A few days later, Sheila and Juan met again in his office. He closed the door behind her. No one else was present. Juan said he was responding to a note she had sent him which indicated she was still upset and insulted by what he’d said to her. He silently wondered how many copies she’d made.
He didn’t feel like they could just leave the situation where they had left it and he wanted to talk about the issues further. He asked her if she was willing and Sheila said, yes. And he tried to explain to her what he meant when he said what he said about pursuing her degree.
The first thing he said was, he didn’t say what he had said to her. And Sheila told him that was untrue, he had in fact said what he said three times.
And then he told Sheila she didn’t understand what he said to her. And Sheila told him she’d asked him repeatedly what he meant, so that she would understand. And she felt she had gotten a full understanding because he repeated the same answer to her.
And he said, well, that’s not what he meant.
And she said, please do tell me what you meant.
And what he said was, he meant, in his experience, pursuing a master’s degree didn’t help you with your promotability.
That’s neither what you said, Sheila told him, nor how it seemed at the time you meant what you did say. She was offended by him trying to make her think she was too dumb to understand him and by telling her that, first, she had lied about what he had said and then, second, she was too dumb to understand what he had said to her.
Sheila got angry again.
She said, sorry, she couldn’t talk about this anymore. She said she was so angry, she don’t want to say anything that would be insulting. He told her she couldn’t say anything that would be insulting. She said, Oh, yes, she could, and she didn’t want to, she was a lady, so she’d better leave now.
And that’s what she did.
About a week later, in his office, they were alone with the door closed. Juan said he wanted to make sure Sheila understood what they had talked about. She told him she understood what his position was and she didn’t agree with it. She thought it was really shortsighted.
Well, we can talk about it some more, he said.
And she said, are you going to say anything different?
And he said, No.
Words to that effect.
Well, I think I understand your position, Sheila said. She felt there was really no point in discussing the matter any further.
That afternoon Noah Wills, he’s the senior vice president of human resources, asked Sheila to come to his office. Just the two of them. Noah thanked her for coming up to talk to him. And he asked her if it would be okay if he took notes, and Sheila said, yes. And he asked her if she minded if he closed the door.
He said he wanted to talk about the stuff that had happened with Juan, and they did. He asked her if she thought the situation had been resolved. Sheila told him she understood what Juan’s position was but she couldn’t agree with it.
They talked about her history with the company. She’d been employed there a long time and this wasn’t the first time she’d been passed over. A few years ago she had been told she would be promoted and then she wasn’t. She had gone out and celebrated, too. Bought a new dress, champagne and everything, and then a couple days later, they eliminated her new position.
Frankly, Sheila didn’t think she’d completely recovered from that fiasco.
About this year’s promotion, Sheila’s not getting one, Noah said he didn’t have the necessary information, he needed to do some investigation before he could answer any of her questions, and he would do that. He would investigate. He needed more time.
Regarding the degree, he told her, of course, the company supports higher education. Of course. But, just because you pursue a degree, doesn’t mean it’s going to be beneficial to the company, and didn’t she agree with that. And Sheila said no, in her particular case, this degree was directly relevant and beneficial.
Noah talked about how some people, when they are pursuing degrees, they take time away from their official duties so they can work on their school assignments, and didn’t she agree that was happening. Sheila told him she didn’t have any information about what other people did when pursuing their degrees. But, in pursuing hers, she hadn’t done anything like that.
They talked about the list of promotions that had come out last year, and how long the list was. Sheila had looked at the list. She told him she had looked at the original charts, too, and done some quick numbers.
Of all the women available for promotion, only ten percent of the women were promoted, but, of the men available for promotion, twenty percent of the men were promoted.
Twice as many men. Not fair.
Noah told her when they do rankings he puts on blinders and he’s not even aware of those results. Sheila found that hard to believe. Just looking at this list of promotions should have opened his eyes, she thought.
He asked her if she thought there was conscious bias and she said, yes. He took offense at that.
He asked her why she thought there was conscious bias. She told him, in light of the fact a lawsuit for sexual discrimination had recently been filed against the company, in her opinion, they could have – should have – taken a step back after determining the promotions and reviewed what they had done. Get a little perspective.
And the fact they didn’t, well, that spoke volumes to Sheila.
She asked for examples of work done by someone at the next higher level. And Noah acted like she was out of line. He said that would be giving out information on a fellow employee’s performance ranking.
That’s not what she wanted.
Sheila said she didn’t expect him to talk about people’s rankings with her. But what Sheila wanted to understand was what it was she wasn’t doing, even though she was continually told she was doing such good work, that prevented her from being promoted. The one thing that made sense to her would be to see examples of work by people at the next level, see what they are doing that she’s not doing. Sheila wanted to see a standard.
Seemed reasonable.
And Noah replied, once again, he couldn’t do that.
He asked her what she thought about Juan as a supervisor. She told him she thought Juan was very removed, he didn’t really understand what they did and wasn’t really making any effort to learn. Clueless, she told him.
Noah ended the conversation by asking her if he had said or done anything to offend her, and she said, no.
And then he said to her, well, he just wanted to conclude by saying, you know, there are some things they just should not talk about. He was trying perhaps in his own way to smooth things over.
Sheila looked at him and she said, well, I’ll tell you, that’s the first thing you’ve said I’ve taken offense to.
Noah gave her this blank stare. He seemed a little stunned.
Sheila said, I feel like I can leave here and talk about everything that was said without any problems and without having to be disciplined for talking about it.
He got angry with her and started to speak in a loud voice. He said she was deliberately misinterpreting him. That what he was talking about was not discussing other people’s performances.
She reminded him she had never wanted to know about other people’s performance, She simply wanted to improve. Besides, that was not the way his statement sounded. So, she again told him she would leave their meetings and talk about whatever they had talked about with whomever she pleased.
He said, okay. And the meeting was over.
Unfortunately, Juan was going to be on vacation and so it would take a couple of weeks until Juan got back to get things resolved. Sheila waited.
Finally, she got to talk to Juan, and she told him Noah had told her how many weeks it would take to get this matter remedied. Time’s up. Sheila asked Juan, had any progress been made. He checked with Noah and then told her the next day they needed more time.
She waited several weeks. Then Sheila asked Juan again if any progress had been made to resolve her issues. Can’t remember exactly how long she waited. She remembers being told again they needed more time. They told her how much more time. Weeks. She waited, and when Sheila finally talked to Juan to find out if they had made any progress, he said he’d have to check with Noah.
On that occasion Sheila got a phone message from Noah: he wanted her to call him in a couple of days. He called on a Friday and he told her to call after lunch on Monday. He didn’t say why. Jesus, don’t know about you, but calls like that from men like that make nerve-wracking weekends for Sheila.
She was off-site when she called Noah. It was around eleven or eleven-thirty, which would have been lunchtime where he was, and he was not there. She tried him a couple of hours later and he was still gone. Finally, she stopped calling and she sent him a note saying she was sorry she had missed him and she was looking forward to his call.
Noah finally got in touch with her, a couple of days later, maybe as much as a week. He told her they were real close to having a resolution but they didn’t have it yet and he would get in touch with her. She said, okay.
Noah called her again, the last week of November. He said Sheila would have to wait until after the layoffs were announced before he told her what the resolution was, but he thought she would like it. She was glad he said that, otherwise she’d have spent all her time worrying about getting laid off herself.
He asked her if she could wait that long. She said she didn’t want to, this had been taking a very long time, she was tired of waiting, she’d like an answer right now, please. And he said, sorry, she was just going to have to wait until after the layoffs were announced. He said, don’t worry about it.
She started worrying.
The Tuesday after the layoffs were announced, much too close to Christmas, Juan and Sheila were on the speaker phone in the conference room. Noah was in Honolulu attending a conference about the role of euphemisms in the outplacement process. She could almost swear, she couldn’t be positive, she heard the surf splashing in the background.
Noah told Sheila that she was promoted and the promotion would be retroactive to July. Which is when Chip Herman was promoted. She asked if that meant she would see a large lump sum of additional cash on my next paycheck and he said, yes.
She said she would look forward to the money. This time, she thought, she’d wait to spend the money until after she cashed the check.
Sheila asked Noah to explain why she was being promoted now in November instead of in July. He told her his investigation had determined there was indeed an de facto inequity in the system. She asked him to explain de facto to her. She had her own understanding, of course, but she wanted to know his meaning. Noah explained de facto meant something along the lines of the corporation was innocent of any official wrongdoing and everything being equal, life is sometimes still not.
Those weren’t his actual words.
But that’s why she was being promoted. He never said she deserved it. She sure as hell felt like she’d sweated blood. She asked him if he would tell her more and he wouldn’t. He’d only say there was an inequity.
She asked him if the other issues she had raised were going to be addressed, specifically the work assignments given to women. Noah sounded upset Sheila had asked about that. He said he couldn’t address that issue. He was late for an important meeting.
Juan just sat there. Probably musing about rocks and hard places and claustrophobia.
And then Noah said he wanted to end the conversation by saying they needed to work on having open communication between the two of them. Sheila should feel free to talk to him at any time about anything he said, or did, which she found offensive. Sheila thought he meant that.
During their conversation, when the two of them were going over some discordant issues, Noah had made a statement several times, and it was the same statement. You don’t seem to be getting the picture, is what he’d say.
He’d tell her about how Grubby’s operated for everybody’s good and Sheila would say, Wait a minute, what about this? Pointing to an obvious contradiction in daily life there. Or this? Or this? Or that! And Noah would then say, you don’t seem to be getting the picture.
He said the same thing several times and it always bothered her. Like he thought she was confused.
And when he said to her he wanted to work on having open communication and she should feel free to tell him any time he said something that was offensive, Sheila said, Well, you know, in this meeting, you’ve said this phrase and I don’t appreciate it when you say that because it always sounds like you think I’m too stupid to understand what you are saying.
Silence.
He was very offended. Noah started to, it sounded like he raised his voice, he was on the phone, so she didn’t know for sure. He wouldn’t let her finish her sentences. He told Sheila he didn’t want to have to watch every word that came out of his mouth around her.
She told him he had just told her that he wanted open communication. He had just said for her to tell him when he said something she didn’t like. Now, she would really have to think hard before she would do that again. He again cut her off in the middle of a sentence, it sounded like he was talking very loud, and he then accused her of refusing to talk to him. By this point Noah might have been losing his executive composure.
And Sheila said, no, that’s not what she said, she would certainly continue to talk to Noah about any work-related matters. However, she said, she would seriously have to think twice before she told him again when he offended me.
At that point Sheila was getting quite agitated.
Noah said to her, I can tell you are upset, I think we can end this conversation.
You got the picture, she said and they hung up.
That’s when Sheila went back to her office and called her lawyer.
She left the door open, too.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS third person
A Crime Story
by Jack Dog Welch copyright 1995
3500 words. Or so.