Grace and Grit (17 page)

As part of my job, I had to ensure that the department maintained sufficient inventory, that the correct specifications were set on the machines, that the tire builders met their production quota, and that the men always wore their safety gear. While I was supervising the tire builders, Jeff, who had tried to get me to go to
the Ramada Inn with him so long ago, started auditing my area. One day he sauntered in and stood behind one of the tire builders, watching him work. Across the room alert signs flashed. Next to those signs hung the erasable board that listed the daily tally of injuries throughout the plant. Today: five reported injuries.

The last time Jeff had visited my department he’d neglected to fill out his safety audit as he usually did, marking the sheet while he was there. Instead, he sat at the break table shooting the breeze with a couple of guys, talking about his golf game and what kind of bait he’d used when he went fishing over the weekend. At our next managers’ meeting in what we called the war room, I was shocked when he handed me my audit; he’d marked that the men in my department weren’t dressed in their safety gear. I scanned the report; I was the only area manager on the summary report who’d been evaluated poorly.

Now I watched Jeff survey my builder, who, like all the other guys, was dressed in his giant goggles resembling insect eyes and the standard steel-toed boots. The loud machinery and industrial fans were deafening, so the guys also wore earplugs. The builder had no idea that Jeff stood behind him observing him and the entire department for his safety audit. The weekly audits were based on eight areas: safety, quality, production, waste, attendance, housekeeping, team meetings, and cost containment. This time I was right there with Jeff looking at my builder dressed in all of his safety gear. He couldn’t pull that stunt on me again.

I walked past Jeff, the hot wind from one of the gigantic fans knocking against me, and nodded a quick hello. Over the years, despite his claims that he had a relative high up the food chain, he hadn’t made it to top-level management as I know he’d expected to. In fact, he’d been demoted, his esteem throughout the plant dwindling over time, so that now he didn’t carry the same clout he once did. Several times I’d seen the bigger guys, a few ex–Alabama
football players, wrestle him down for entertainment as they drank beer in the parking lot after work.

Watching Jeff finally leave, I took a deep breath, trying to let go of my anxiety as I wondered what he’d written on the report this time.

J
EFF CONTINUED
to rate me poorly on my audits, and each week reading the audit summaries, I tried to let my anger move through me. When he downgraded me in the other areas as well as safety, maintaining that the tire-building machines weren’t always running at full capacity, I tried to keep my composure. I tried to stand tall and throw back my shoulders just as I’d learned to do dancing. Once I’d overheard a woman talking at a dance showcase. We were in the bathroom primping. She was standing next to her friend and applying her red lipstick. She leaned toward her reflection, quiet for a minute as she concentrated on keeping the lipstick within the lines of her full lips. Satisfied, she straightened herself up, pointed the lipstick case at herself in the mirror. “You can win a competition with a smile, but it’s how you hold yourself that counts,” she said, and snapped that gold lipstick case shut. She dabbed her lips with Kleenex. “You have to look like you own the place. You have to hold your shoulders as if you have a shoe box between them. You might make a mistake with your feet, but the judges can’t watch your steps the whole time. They’re more impressed by how you handle yourself.”

There wasn’t much I could do to prove that Jeff was marking the audit sheet incorrectly. The only thing I could do was handle myself with grace.

As if things couldn’t get worse, Eddie, who’d had his mind set against me since I had filed the sexual-harassment complaint against Goodyear years before, became one of my supervisors again, replacing Eric, who’d given me two annual raises and recognized my
work with the Top Performance Award only several months before. Managers were usually moved for one of three reasons: to replace someone who’d been promoted, to get more production from a crew than the previous manager had, or as punishment. Eddie was moved to my area as the business center manager because Eric had been moved. I had to wonder what that would mean for me.

I’d worked for Eddie after the incident with the EEOC once before, in final finish. He’d been my department foreman in 1986 for a short time before he informed me about my layoff, after which I went to Tyson, so I was thrilled when he’d taken the time to write me a congratulatory note about being chosen as one of four to start up the radial light-truck division in 1992. His words—“You have worked hard and improved a lot the past few years and you deserve the opportunity”—had stayed with me. With his short, simple note, I’d achieved recognition from someone who’d viewed me as a troublemaker before. It was an important gesture, like the gold bracelet the union guys had given me.

I reminded myself of these things when I became discouraged. From his note, it sounded like Eddie’s attitude had softened, but I was worried; I’d recently heard from another supervisor that Eddie had been told by the plant manager, who’d returned from Akron to turn around the Gadsden plant, to get rid of the drunk and the damn woman in his new department. I had been in a managers’ meeting with that plant manager, known for his hard, unforgiving ways, when he informed the group that Goodyear didn’t need women at the plant because they only created trouble. As his words sank in at that meeting, I suspected I was right back where I’d started so long ago.

I
COULDN’T
worry too much about Eddie and Jeff. My most immediate concern was my stomach, which had been acting up for a long time but had suddenly gotten worse. My diet wasn’t so great. I went from eating too little to eating everything in sight. For a
couple of months when I went to the restroom, I waited a minute before I turned to flush, disheartened to see the red water in the toilet. I ignored the blood until, doubled over in pain one day, I couldn’t deny the obvious anymore.

My physical problem ultimately resulted in colon surgery. The doctor said my problem was stress-related—my rectal muscles had tightened to the point that they ripped when food tried to pass through my body.

The charming joke at the plant was that I was having the two-way radio removed from my rear end. All the supervisors carried the radios, but the guys spent so much time swearing across the airwaves that I usually kept mine turned off. It drove them nuts when I wouldn’t answer.

In the hospital room, lying in bed recovering, I said a prayer to myself and thanked God for letting me live. I was relieved that the surgery was over—I imagined the doctor stitching me back together like he was sewing a piece quilt—and the doctor didn’t discover any cancer. I had been worried that I had colon cancer, which had killed my grandmother Lillie.

Like Edna might do, in a melodramatic daydream before my surgery, I tried to envision my funeral. Who would come? What would they say? I’m not sure what my family could say since I’d missed out on so many important moments in their lives, moments I couldn’t relive. I still felt bad about not having helped Vickie with her wedding, the way a bride’s mother should, and that had been ages ago. She and Bill had had a simple but beautiful ceremony on the first day of fall. I was working so much overtime that I couldn’t be as involved with their wedding plans as I wanted to be. They handled everything, while Edna sewed the bridesmaids’ dresses.

I’d barely shown up.

Just as I had not flown to Texas to see Charles receive his ranking as sergeant or been able to attend his college graduation ceremony.

And I hadn’t spent enough time with my father before he died.

And what would the folks from Goodyear say after all was said and done? Would anybody say that I was a good manager, that I met my production goals, that I served the company well? Some would say I was a troublemaker, of course, but did it really matter what anybody said? What nagged me now was the larger question of what I’d really done with my life.

T
HE TREES
outside my window, now bare, reminded me that Thanksgiving was fast approaching. It was my favorite holiday, and the idea of cooking the turkey with Charles and baking my grandsons’ favorite pies relaxed me. In the most recent years, holidays had seemed more like a chore than a pleasure. This Thanksgiving, I was thankful for my health and felt a deep sense of gratitude for my family. I planned to enjoy our time together without letting my stress ruin our holiday, as it had done now for the past several years.

I thought I was handling the stress, keeping my work life and home life separate, but I wasn’t. I’m ashamed to say that I’d been flaring up at home for entirely too long, and even in public, like the afternoon I was at the mall with Vickie picking up a pair of dance shoes. When I realized that the shoes hadn’t been dyed the right color, I was so nasty to the man behind the counter that he called security. Now, during family vacations with Vickie and the grandkids, my body fell apart and I’d be sick in bed. I couldn’t even enjoy my two grandsons—Will was already ten, and Ross, born five years after Will, was growing up fast. I’d tried to keep my promise to myself to be involved with the grandkids, but on our annual beach trips I’d collapse. And I was tough on Charles. Nothing he said or did made me happy.

B
UT SOMETHING
greater was going on. I understand now how the mistreatment of women can ruin their health and affect their family
life, but instead of directing my anger at Goodyear, I lashed out at people who didn’t deserve it or turned my frustrations inward. Literally. My body had been telling me what I didn’t want to face. The job wasn’t worth the suffering, but I wasn’t ready to admit defeat. I told myself that the good outweighed the bad.

I convinced myself that I’d had many productive years at Goodyear. It just depended on who my supervisor was and what department I was in, but the doctor’s words when he’d given me a checkup rumbled around in my mind, refusing to leave. He’d insisted that I scale back at work or I’d find myself right back in his office with possibly something worse to deal with. That concerned me. I’d always seen myself as a lifer at Goodyear, working thirty years, knowing when I retired that Charles and I would have the security of full medical coverage. I also had to build up as much retirement as possible to live on and reduce the debt we’d accumulated owning a home, buying cars, and paying for college.

Confined to the hospital bed with the TV turned to silent, I watched Charles sleep in the chair beside me, comforted by his presence. I still admired his broad shoulders and strong body. When we were in the waiting room right before I was called back for surgery, I caught the silhouette of a tall man talking to my doctor down the hall. My heart jumped at the sight of this handsome man. It was Charles. After all these years, I could still feel the same giddiness I felt as a schoolgirl.

We’d been through a lot together, and I was distressed about how much time we’d spent apart. He’d been more than patient with me. Too patient, probably. I felt like I’d abandoned him at times, leaving him to raise the kids alone. The truth was, I’d neglected those who cared about me most. Sometimes, going to work had been easier than dealing with the messiness of family life. If Charles hadn’t been a Baptist, he and I would have probably divorced during those impossible years when the kids were teenagers.

Shifting my body trying to find a comfortable position, I hoped
the pain medicine would kick in soon. I watched the silent image of Murphy Brown flitting on the screen across the room and reached for the control to set the bed higher. The searing sensations the pain pill hadn’t dulled washed over me.

My body was telling me something, and I needed to listen. I needed my life to be different now, but what if it was too late? I prayed it wasn’t.

A
FTER THE
surgery, I returned to work the last week before the plant closed on Christmas Eve, as it always did for the one-week holiday. Often when workers returned from a medical leave they were given a lighter load, and Eddie assigned me to work in one of the offices with Sharon, a secretary. Before this, I’d spoken to Sharon only in the mornings when I was coming off the night shift and she was starting her morning routine. I didn’t know her well, but I knew she’d been at Goodyear much longer than I had.

Working with Sharon all day, I learned that she’d been a supervisor for eight years before she had to quit the night shift and take on less responsibility. She had been a single mother with a small child, and when her daughter’s caregiver died of cancer, Sharon had to change her work routine. She told me she’d been approached several years earlier to return to being a supervisor.

“Why didn’t you take the offer?” I asked, surprised that she was still a secretary.

“I did. I couldn’t say no to thirty-two hundred dollars a month. And I was told I’d be given raises in the future to get me even with the men’s salary.”

“What happened?”

“I started working in the tire room, but I should have known something was up when I got my first paycheck and it was exactly the same as what I’d been making as a secretary.”

“What did you do? Go talk to somebody about it?”

“At first, no. You know how things are. I hoped for the best and kept on working.” She looked past me through the office window. I turned to see what she was looking at, a group of night supervisors huddled together, talking. I half expected them to put their hands together and do a group hurrah before running out onto some imaginary field. I turned back to Sharon.

“You were in same area I was when I was in the tire room. How many associates did you supervise?”

“Fifty-two men.”

“That’s a lot of builders to deal with.”

“I know. I also had the truckers to deal with and had to oversee inspection, but some of the old-timers are really good, and then there are some who will fall asleep right there at the machine. I had this one guy who’d wander off on break every five minutes.”