Read Online Grace and Grit by Lilly Ledbetter - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lilly Ledbetter
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test a month later. The manager who hired me the following January agreed to let me skiplunch and leave at four-thirty to pick up Vickie and Phillip from Mrs. Harris’s after-school care.
I immediately fell in love with the job. I no longer felt so out of sorts, like some pollywog adrift in the water; instead, I had a goal to fulfill. I was paid minimum wage, $2.90 hour, against a draw, which was based on the number of tax returns I completed. The more returns I finished, the more I earned. We were paid $5 for each return, and I quickly devised a system to maximize my effort.
Each day I eagerly awaited customers, sitting behind my desk in my pink dress, navy hose, and white shoes, ready to operate my electronic calculator, the size of a shoe box, whose whirring muted the sound of the receptionist snapping her Juicy Fruit gum. It wasn’t long before the boss’s wife took me aside and suggested that I wear a different color combination. I stuck to polyester pant suits after that. At lunch I sat at my small metal desk, the gray carpet around me stained from coffee spills, and stirred my beef bouillon cubes in my cup of hot water until they dissolved. I kept my bottom desk drawer stocked with boxes of Lipton’s instant chicken noodle soup and Nestlé’s hot chocolate mix. Throughout the afternoon I sipped hot chocolate, my tongue trying to nudge loose the tiny pieces of rubbery marshmallow wedged in my teeth.
I never knew who would come walking through the door from one day to the next. It could be a restaurant owner with years of greasy, jumbled receipts I’d have to sort into order. The time the door swung open and a man appeared in the office carrying a large dry-cleaning box used to store a woman’s winter coat, the other agents averted their eyes and tried to look busy. I offered to help the man. Once he sat down, I handed him several books of matches we always gave our customers from a well-stocked bowl on my desk. He pulled a small ledger from the cardboard box, standing almost as tall as he was. Inside the black leather ledger were pages of perfectly kept records in a tight, neat script. I didn’task about his odd record-keeping system, and he didn’t offer an explanation.
Although I’d started working motivated solely by financial pressures, I soon found a greater reward as I exercised skills I didn’t know I possessed. I enjoyed aspects of the job most people hated. I was the only one in the office who actually liked it when we had to piece together the copy machine the supervisor dismantled on purpose, to test whether we could fix it on our own. Tinkering with the copier parts, I thought about the hours my father spent in the garage repairing his cars for an extra buck. That wasn’t work for him. He enjoyed it. Now I knew why.
At the end of the day when I clocked out, I rushed to pick up Vickie and Phillip. After I put the kids to bed, I left Charles, who, of course, was beside himself that I was leaving, at home watching
All in the Family
and returned to H&R Block to finish filling out the forms stacked up by my desk. During the three and a half months of my first tax season, I somehow managed to prepare five thousand returns.
Charles resented my long hours; they were hard on everyone. He’d immediately regretted agreeing to my working. In his eyes, my job took me away from our family and church, and he complained about everything to do with it—especially the fact that I was sometimes alone in the office late at night with only my manager.
The following summer I was offered a full-time position. I didn’t even consult with Charles. I knew he’d say no if I asked him about working the entire year. He’d only agreed to my working in the first place because it was something I could do during the short tax season, from January to April. I felt as though I was finally coming into my own, and I wasn’t about to let him take that away from me.
I accepted the offer on the spot.
W HEN I did tell
I immediately fell in love with the job. I no longer felt so out of sorts, like some pollywog adrift in the water; instead, I had a goal to fulfill. I was paid minimum wage, $2.90 hour, against a draw, which was based on the number of tax returns I completed. The more returns I finished, the more I earned. We were paid $5 for each return, and I quickly devised a system to maximize my effort.
Each day I eagerly awaited customers, sitting behind my desk in my pink dress, navy hose, and white shoes, ready to operate my electronic calculator, the size of a shoe box, whose whirring muted the sound of the receptionist snapping her Juicy Fruit gum. It wasn’t long before the boss’s wife took me aside and suggested that I wear a different color combination. I stuck to polyester pant suits after that. At lunch I sat at my small metal desk, the gray carpet around me stained from coffee spills, and stirred my beef bouillon cubes in my cup of hot water until they dissolved. I kept my bottom desk drawer stocked with boxes of Lipton’s instant chicken noodle soup and Nestlé’s hot chocolate mix. Throughout the afternoon I sipped hot chocolate, my tongue trying to nudge loose the tiny pieces of rubbery marshmallow wedged in my teeth.
I never knew who would come walking through the door from one day to the next. It could be a restaurant owner with years of greasy, jumbled receipts I’d have to sort into order. The time the door swung open and a man appeared in the office carrying a large dry-cleaning box used to store a woman’s winter coat, the other agents averted their eyes and tried to look busy. I offered to help the man. Once he sat down, I handed him several books of matches we always gave our customers from a well-stocked bowl on my desk. He pulled a small ledger from the cardboard box, standing almost as tall as he was. Inside the black leather ledger were pages of perfectly kept records in a tight, neat script. I didn’task about his odd record-keeping system, and he didn’t offer an explanation.
Although I’d started working motivated solely by financial pressures, I soon found a greater reward as I exercised skills I didn’t know I possessed. I enjoyed aspects of the job most people hated. I was the only one in the office who actually liked it when we had to piece together the copy machine the supervisor dismantled on purpose, to test whether we could fix it on our own. Tinkering with the copier parts, I thought about the hours my father spent in the garage repairing his cars for an extra buck. That wasn’t work for him. He enjoyed it. Now I knew why.
At the end of the day when I clocked out, I rushed to pick up Vickie and Phillip. After I put the kids to bed, I left Charles, who, of course, was beside himself that I was leaving, at home watching
All in the Family
and returned to H&R Block to finish filling out the forms stacked up by my desk. During the three and a half months of my first tax season, I somehow managed to prepare five thousand returns.
Charles resented my long hours; they were hard on everyone. He’d immediately regretted agreeing to my working. In his eyes, my job took me away from our family and church, and he complained about everything to do with it—especially the fact that I was sometimes alone in the office late at night with only my manager.
The following summer I was offered a full-time position. I didn’t even consult with Charles. I knew he’d say no if I asked him about working the entire year. He’d only agreed to my working in the first place because it was something I could do during the short tax season, from January to April. I felt as though I was finally coming into my own, and I wasn’t about to let him take that away from me.
I accepted the offer on the spot.
W HEN I did tell
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