I had moved back home from Indiana with my Fiance and I was looking for work. I am not a picky person when it comes to where I need to work to get money rolling in. I was 28 at the time and had already been a cosmetologist, Store manager and worked in the Auto industry so I felt pretty confident about my skill set and set out applying for jobs anywhere I could with my fiance.
A couple weeks went by and both of us received a call from a paper mill who was hiring for multiple positions. My Aunt had worked for 20 years in a paper mill and had shared some awful stories of huge cockroaches, it was incredibly hot and smelly, but left out the part where she was one of just a few women in the entire facility where she worked. I had no idea how much of a role that would play in my future.
The day I got the call to show up for my first interview was also the day my fiance got his. I was getting offered a non union , salary position in their quality department and my fiance was offered a spot in their union production side of the operations. We joked at how weird it was going to be if they ever had to strike during contract negotiations and he was sent to picket and I was sent to be a "scab" worker. Fast forward to my first couple of weeks on the job. I finished up training on first shift and I absolutely loved the job so far. I worked in a lab, i ran tests my whole shift. I was learning the ins and out of productions and saw that I could easily keep climbing if I wanted too. Training took place on first shift and i was told that when I was done I would be taking my full time position on third to cover for the man that was soon retiring. I had hated working third shift in the past and really dreaded it. I didn't want to work all night and sleep all day but then my fiance also got schedule for third so we were both happy about it in the end.
During my third week on the job , it was rough. I was the only woman in the entire building. I had not anticipated that at all and I had no idea the crap storm it would cause. I was confident I could handle anything that was tossed at me due to my 'Brassy" nature, the fact I had worked in an industrial environment before, and I have a thick skin. Let me tell you, all of those things I just listed was probably the reason why I survived at all.
During my first week on my own I was verbally attacked on a regular basis. I would go to check our production reel numbers to make sure my quality reports were on the same number as the product they had coming off of our rewinder so our data matched the product. I was "being hazed" I'm pretty sure. I am a big mouth by nature, but when I am joining a new job or meeting new people I am quiet. I like to get a feel of the who what and where before I decide how much of my Brassy ways I can comfortably let out. When I was verbally attacked the first time I was told to "Shut the fuck up before they mad me shut up" when I simply asked what reel number they were on. It pained me not to retort back because I really wanted too but I was in a new place and outnumbered 6 to 1. 5 "men" sat and watched this go on and said nothing. I didn't want to say anything because I needed the job and I felt it would pass. I mean, yeah it sucked but I was just getting my barrings and words only hurt me if I give them power. So I let it roll. A few weeks went by and I had a run in with their Boss. On company power level, he was my equal. I had called down to the Machine control and told them I had to odd-lot some paper and why so they could make the appropriate changes. Their manager answered the phone and told me I better shut my mouth or he was going to come down and "bitch slap me". I was starting to see a pattern here. There were no other female employees around. Management and employees were allowed to run around shout threats of assault. To make a long story short, that is where I drew the line and took this particular matter to my boss and told him what was said. I did not know it, but the manager who threatened me went behind me to my boss and tried to make it out like he was stressed and may have snapped at me". When my Boss heard what he actually said and that the men he said it in front of were gong to side with me he had no choice to back down and my Boss gave me the option to pursue the threat and get him fired or have him reprimanded and put on his record and put on last chance. I must have felt extra forgiving because I went with option 2. The odd thing is, he was actually crying when he came to apologize to me. I didn't know if it was from his broken pride or if he felt shameful, but we actually were able to push past that experience and joke about him being an asshole years later. I think it was a culture shock having a female on the shift for the first time for everyone involved, but that is no excuse.
FAST FORWARD to my #MeTOO moment...
Part of the culture shock was the fact that being the only female on my shift and 1 of 8 spread across the three shifts, there were things they had not run up against before. The first tour of the recycled paper warehouse was one of them! Being that I worked in a paper mill that only used recycled paper, guess what was on the floor of our paper warehouse? Playboys, Hustlers, and any other type of XXX adult publications! Not even "up to date" ones, but those of the 1970 and 1980's where the bush flowed freely. Every cubicle and nook the guys worked out of had nude chic calendars. This was an HR Nightmare if I had ever seen one, but guess what? We didn't have an HR. NOPE! There was not a human resource person when I was hired. Some employees didn't wear shirts when it was hot and they smoke openly in the facility full of paper! It was nuts. I had never seen anything like it. I felt like I was teleported back to the 1950's.
As time went on , these things slowly and begrudgingly changed. We finally got a human resource person and she went to town bringing the mill up to speed and out of the "Good ole Boys Club" it had morphed into. The smut mags and nude calendars were removed or tucked out of sight over time, but the culture remained the same. One night, while I was on third shift the paper had a break and when that happens all of the guys have to rush out to the machine and it can take hours for it to be up and running again. This meant that I could stop testing paper and sit down, pull out a book eat my lunch, play on my phone as I had my lab all to myself. On day shift the lab is full of people, but on third is was just me and I grew to love it until I met Bill. Bill was a first shift employee I had not met before. He worked on first shift but would come in randomly 4 hours early on 3rd shift and work in shipping. When he paper broke on the nights Bill would come up to my lab to "Talk". I didn't know Bill so my feelers were out. I noticed an arrogance about him. I noticed that he made himself very comfortable in my lab as if I had invited him to pull up a chair and sit a few feet next to me. I didn't think anything of it, I figured he was just bored as much as I was, until one night. On a normal night, during a normal paper break Bill entered my lab and walked right up to me and put his hand on my arm as I was looking up at a computer on the wall taking down data for the paper break. I felt his hand on my arm and I looked at him while trying to figure out why he was touching me. I am a BIG person on personal space. I will hug the shit out of my loved ones, but I am very selective on who I allow into my bubble. I knew sure as shit he was not on the VIP list. Bill then took his hand and started rubbing my bare skin. It was summer and I was wearing a normal t-shirt. He then started telling me my skin was soft and that is when my mind chose one of the three F's.
Fight, Flight, Or Freeze.
In that moment I chose fight. I don't know if it was because I've had enough of all of the bullshit. If I was by nature a fighter? At that moment I turned to Bill and ripped my arm away from him , made a fist and put it in his face and rawred in my best dragon voice ,
"IF YOU TOUCH ME AGAIN I WILL WRECK YOU!!!!!!" .
Bill took a step back then smiled. I charged him and told him to get out of my lab and he better never return. I must have been persuasive enough because he never did. BUT, Bill may have been gone but he was not done. I didn't know what to do about it. It was his word against mine. I had already had issues with verbal abuse and was afraid of being the boat rocker. The whistle blower. I told myself that I had handled it. I didn't let anything happen. There were no other women around for me to compare notes with. I just let it drop right there... Anytime I saw Bill around I would lock my lab door. I would do it without hesitation. I didn't care if it looked weird. I didn't care what anyone thought. I was my priority.
Fast forward 5 years...
I was no longer on third in the lab. I had been given a lead spot running my own training team in a nice little office out the main action on first shift. I liked it. I worked with 2 of my friends, they reported to me and we worked like a well oiled machine. Life was good. On occasion I would have to go to my old lab every now and then to build new training manual for testing processes and I would chit chat with my fellow coworkers in the lab. On one of these trips I stopped to visit with the first shift tester "Tamara". She was new. She had only been there a couple of weeks. She seemed to be in a good mood until she saw Bill. I had forgotten he was even on the same shift as me because I was no longer crossing paths with him, but the look on her face showed me she had crossed paths with him. It is like seeing him while talking to me made Tamara break down. She turned to me and told me she needed my help. That Bill had been coming in early and she had been coming in early which would put both of them on third shift at the same time. She proceeded to share that he started to touch her a couple weeks ago, just little touches and she didn't know what to do. She was in tears telling me that when she had come in earlier on the shift that he had walked in the lab behind her , grabbed her around her waist and held her in place then he started kissing her neck. She was a married woman of 25 years. She had three kids . She was terrified . Her husband and Bill knew each other from being on the same Union Board for two businesses in the city. Tamara's guard was already down with Bill because she had met him with her husband at fundraisers and knew of him as her husbands friend. She told me she didnt want to do this alone but she couldn't. I told her that I had my own run in with Bill years ago and know she isn't lying. I told her she needed to tell our boss because the situation with Bill had escalated to a point that had her mortified. She was sobbing and broken. I knew that when she asked me to help her I was agreeing to be her shield. I knew that she did not fight, or flight, but instead she froze. It broke my heart to see her frozen. I was 4 months pregnant with my first child and selfishly thought, "I cant be bothered with this. Why did she have to ask me for help? I was bloated, in pain, stressed as it is and to even think about going after a serial sexual harasser was a mountain I was tired and terrified to climb, but what were my options?" I decided to do what I felt in my heart was right and to pray to God to give me the strength to pull us through it.
Fast forward a couple weeks.....
I'm not going to lie, but those couple weeks we just zoomed by...were hell. I knew they would be but I had no idea in what way. Being that we worked in a union paper-mill but we were management and Bill was Union, he had to have a union rep present with him when the meeting was held to discuss the accusations being brought forward from the company. Once the meeting was over the "witch hunt" began. The company did not share the accusers name, so Tamara and I were safe for the moment. Now, perhaps you thought it would have been the stereotypical band of men hunting for the females who were going after "one of their own" but it wasn't. It was our fellow women coworkers. Talk about adding salt to the wound. It was stressful enough trying to keep our identities safe while everything was unraveling let alone have to be hunted as if we were the predators. Tamara was in the clear. No one suspected her. She was new. She was quiet. She tried hard to be liked by everyone by bringing in baked goods and pop for everyone. That brought me relief. Over the past five years the ratio of women vs men in the paper-mill was still severely balanced and the ones that were working only worked on first shift. I had become friends with all of them to some extent and that is when i started to see yet a different layer to sexual harassment. The protectors.
I never, in a gazillion years would have thought that the most vocal crowd defending Bill were the handful of women in the mill. It never crossed my mind. I was hearing a wide range of comments. Some claimed they had been in a relationship with him and he wasn't like that, that Bill was just a "touchy feely" guy who liked to flirt. They were viciously denouncing all claims of harassment and saying that whoever was coming out against him was lying and leading him on. They started to attack one another and suspect each other of being the whistle blower. It was disgusting. A part of me felt sad for them too because it was clear that he was grooming them all of these years. He was making each of them feel like they were his only chosen one but in reality anyone who wouldn't or couldn't say no was. As the weeks went on more people ended up speaking out against Bill. I was yet again shocked. Men and women were coming forward. It had gotten out somehow that I was the "whistle-blower" even though I was not technically the one, but I took the title so Tamara wouldn't have too. I didn't have to work down in the lab around everyone anymore and people started coming to me to talk to me about what Bill had done to them and asking how they could be added to the growing pool of the harassed. In the end Bill was fired. He admitted that he did everything that everyone had accused him of. There was never any further action against him. After Bill was fired more stories came out and more people felt comfortable to share their stories. I did hear through a family friend that he ended up getting a new job where they worked and got fired for sexual harassment there too. I am not surprised as time went on and the more stories came out it was clear that Bill was a predator. He had a pattern to his behavior. He targeted the new hires. The fresh meat. The people nobody knew. The people who needed the job. The people who would have felt the most vulnerable, working alone with no one else around. Predators look for prey where they know they will find it. Bill taught me how to be unapologetic to future predators I have come across. That is another #metoo story for a different day.
Looking back...
We are worth the fight. You are worth the fight. All of us are worthy of our truth.
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