I was hired with î8/hr. That was great. My direct boss was a bubbly young girl. We went along fine. Her boss was the Medical Director. He was a difficult man. Sometimes extremely helpful and friendly, other times extremely mad and making life miserable for everyone. The young girl, his assistant couldn’t cope with this. She quit. To take her place, a very handsome young man was hired. He was extremely full of himself and constantly put me down. After a little while, he, too, left the company. During that time, my workload had increased a lot. I had many bosses. Everybody wanted something and all wanted it NOW. I asked for a raise. I was told that I would be given a little bit more money but that I would be on a salary not hourly wages any more. I accepted because I had no choice. Soon I discovered that I was expected to work very long hours and my income per hour had actually been decreased.
I was offered the position of Administrative Assistant to the Medical Director. But no increase in salary. This was the position that the two other people before me had abandoned. And I soon discovered that the position was extremely stressful. The director would scream and yell and threaten that he would fire me. I couldn’t afford to be unemployed so I took everything. Then, his wife, who was the President of the company, said she wanted me to be her assistant too. I ended up working for both of them.
They had a very interesting relationship. They seem to genuinely like and love each other but quite frequently they had violent temper tantrums, in front of all the employees. They would slam doors so hard that pictures on the wall would fall down. They liked to dictate long memos and I had to transcribe them. They also dictated long memos to each other. They were about their home life, their difficulties with their children, etc., etc. At one time, the medical director dictated a long memo, which he instructed me to distribute. One of his plans was to fire an old friend who worked for him. I distributed this memo and when he realized that I did it, he got extremely mad saying that I was not supposed to distribute it.
One Thanksgiving Day, he asked a few of us to come to work and I did. He served us Turkey at the office. He and his wife frequently went on trips. They were both extremely disorganized and said that they needed somebody to help them pack. So, one day, the wife gave me the keys to her Mercedes and instructions to go to her house and start their packing. I felt very hesitant about both taking her car and going to their house. But she insisted. So I went. And I did indeed fold and put things in suitcases. At a later date, he had hired another Administrative Assistant for himself since I was then his wife’s official Administrative Assistant. He called us both to his house to pack. We both went although the other girl was amazed that she could actually be called to do such a thing. She asked me whether that had happened before and whether I thought it would happen again. I answered “Yes” to both questions. Then she promptly quit. And the Medical Director cursed me and yelled at me and said that I would get a kick in the butt and I would be fired for making those remarks that made the girl quit. I didn’t react too much because I knew his tempers by then. In a few days he forgot about it. He also had temper tantrums when he asked me to do something and I did it too promptly. He was in the habit of frequently changing his mind and being sorry for his decisions. And when he changed his mind, he found out that the job had already been completed.
Contrary to a general tendency of American employees, especially young ones, to quit at the smallest provocation, I stoically endured most anything my employers would dish out. It was extremely stressful and I often came home depressed and crying but I stuck to the job. I couldn’t afford not to. Money was very tight. It was especially hard for me because I have a very quick temper myself and have a tendency to answer back and furiously argue my point of view. I had to keep a very close check on my temper because I needed the job. No matter what happened, I made a point of never quitting a job.
Marriage
A few months after I arrived in America, in one of my letters to my boyfriend in Romania, I asked him whether he wanted to marry me and come live in America. He said, “Yes”. At that time, I was no longer a Romanian citizen and marriages between Romanians and non-Romanians had to be approved by the Council of State. I sent him the necessary papers; he collected his papers and applied. It took a while but, BIG SURPRISE, it was approved. We were overjoyed. Soon we realized there was a catch. He couldn’t leave Romania unless he was married. I needed to go there to marry there. But… I was not given a visa to enter Romania. I started memos again. I even contacted my local Congressman and asked him to intervene. My visa was constantly denied. It was my boyfriend’s turn to look for other options. He went to the Italian Embassy to see whether he would be allowed to travel to Italy to get married there. Nothing worked.
(va urma)
