Women make the world go round. You know, they're they're sure that their bosses answer all their phone calls and you know, answer their mail, and that there's enough coffee in the in the office. Once upon a time, That's how it was in the American office, as any viewer of TV's Madmen could tell you. On this edition of On the Job From Hired to Retired, we have a profile of Carol Davis and want to tell you right off the bat that our reporter, Katie Davis, is Carol's daughter.
She saw her mom rise from typist and switchboard operator to having one of the most important jobs in her profession. Her story in a moment. First, a word about Express Employment Professionals. Over the past thirty four years, Express Employment Professionals has put millions of people to work in meaningful and fulfilling jobs and careers. If you're looking for work or want to grow your workforce, go to express pros dot com. Job hopping is what people do these days.
Many will have four different jobs in just the first decade out of college. So let's consider a woman who worked at the same place for thirty nine years. Carol Davis is seventy nine now. She started her job in the nineteen sixties, a time when the number of women in the workforce was increasing, even though their ranks were very thin in management and in many professions. Here's Katie Davis. Morning rush hasn't started, and Carol Davis pulls into the
driveway of her old office. It was a private home and then converted into the American Psychiatric Association. Carol Davis gets out of the car and points up to the second floor and that up there, to the right of the entrance was my office, the big that They had these big windows and each window has a little balcony on us. And come around here and I'll show you Dr Barton's office. Dr Walter Barton, I grew up here
in that name. My mother's boss was a teacher. When she really needed one, she learned about psychiatry ethics and that sometimes you just have to do things yourself, Like the day Dr Barton noticed the windows were dirty, and right up there is where he stood on the balcony had washed the windows. He didn't ask Carol Davis to do it. He just got out there, suit and all. And you're lucky, she says. If you get one boss
like him, once in your career just once. Carol says she needed guidance when she arrived at the a p A in nine She was recently divorced and her husband had custody of us kids. Her parents and weird in West Virginia wanted her to come back to live in this deal town and they would take care of everything, including the house. But she knew if she ever wanted her kids back, she had to be able to support herself,
and starting on the ground floor was just fine. I wasn't really equipped to do much, to tell you the truth, I think I typed twenty words a minute. Not well, you know, I worked in some bars, and I worked, you know, as a waitress, and but you know that
doesn't equip you for much. Then I went on an interview with the a p A American Psychiatric and Joe Turgeon interviewed me, and basically, you know, I just said, I don't really do too much, but I'd love to have this job, and so he hired me based on I guess a whole lot of trust and maybe like me. I don't know, but anyway, it was my first job there. I don't do too much, but I'd love to have
this job. Imagine saying that in an interview, I can see my mom flashing her wide smile, willing her way into the American Psychiatric Association for herself and for us kids. Carol tells me all this sitting in her blue chair in the house she now owns We came to live with her five years after she got that first job. Folk art fills the wall, a silk screen of a blue dog and painted slate from New Orleans. She sits in that chair and reads two newspapers every day, finishes
two crossword puzzles, and plays bridge. She lives on her pension and social Security. And all of it started at the American Psychiatric Association. I don't know that I had a chop time exactly, but I ordered the toilet paper, and I ordered the paper towels, and I ordered the paper, and you know, the pencils, all the things that people needed to work. What did you need stencils for stencils. That's how you duplicated things. This is pre xerox days.
If you wanted to like produce a ten page report, you had the type ten pages of stencils, and then you had to correct him if you made a mistake, which was in and of itself, unbelievable. Correcting a stencil you got purple all over yourself. It was awful. So that's what I did in I also learned how to relieve on the switchboard. I had never even seen a switchboard, let alone run one, for God's sake, and let me
tell you, it was difficult. I am not the most mechanical person in the world, and learning to push the plug in the right hole to connect somebody sometimes often eluded me. And I cut people off and they would get mad and they would call down or calm down and say, you cut me off. I say, well, i'm learning, I'm learning, please, I'm learning. Anyway, I learned, but it
was a real chore, you know. That's why I think one of the things that I used to enjoy when little tall and did Ernestine was because that's how I felt. Oh anyway, So that was my job. So that was my job. It was work that women often did in the early nineteen sixties. It was an association of men. Let's face it. I mean there were very few women's psychiatrists. There were some, but a very small number. But it was that they you know, we're just super to me.
I can't tell you. You know, it was just so easy to work here because the men were not showing us pigs, and if they were, I didn't record noise in those days, you know. I mean, it was a good job, and I loved it, and you know, they always treated me with a great deal of respect. And and let me tell you, I was a puppy who
knew nothing. It's a good place. We're going to take a short pause now, and when we come back, I'll talk to Carol Davis about her best years in her job and about the time she stood up for herself when the American Psychiatric Association tried to push her out. You're listening to On the Job from Hired to Retired, brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. I'm Steve Mencher.
If you are searching for a job, Express Employment Professionals can help access free video training on what skills are in demand in today's job market, resume writing, interview tips, and more. Visit Express pros dot com slash job Genius. You can become a job genius today Express pros dot com slash job Genius. Express is on a mission to
put a million people to work each year. Let us help you get informed with the job market forecast, part of the free Job Genius video series from Express Employment Professionals. Watch it now at Express pros dot com slash job Genius. Welcome back to the second half of I'm the Job from Hired to Retired. I'm Katie Davis, and we're talking with my mom, Carol Davis, about her career with her lifetime employer. She took an entry level job in nineteen
and worked at the same place until she retired. At first, she knew very little about administrative work, so she stayed after five o'clock for tutorials about the operations manual and the constitution of the A p A. She says, in a way, her lack of experience made her a blank slate for learning how things were done there and forgetting a promotion to work with the medical director, Dr Barton. Up. I went to you know, the fancy offices that he had, uh and UM typed. That'saw all I did is I typed,
and I've remembered that. I went in and I said, Dr Barton, you have time to talk to me. He said, well, of course, you know, I said, Dr Barton, I took this job, but you told me that I wasn't going to have to type all day and that's all I do. And he said, oh, dear, well you'll learn other things to do. And now at the end of the discussion, so I learned other things to do. That was kind of a brave thing to do. He hadn't been working for him that long. You went right up and talked
to him. Well, that's who he was. His door was always open, it never was closed ever ever, you know. And once when I was I sat outside at his office and and I decided that I hadn't had a raise, and I needed a little bit more money, and so I thought, well, I'll look for a job. So on my lunch ower, I wasn't sitting up my desk reading the one as and Dr Barton's and circling them, and Dr Barton said, are you looking for another job? And I said, well, you know, I was thinking that maybe
I could make more money. And he said, oh, so I got a race. And that was the only time I ever did anything like that. I then I got regular raises from then on and and I moved up in the job. So I eventually, you know, became his special assistant. And you know and did more, you know, but mostly I typed the whole day even then because he dictated. When someone would hear this, they might think, how could you love this place that much? You're just kind of uh doing a lot of typing because what
you were doing was interesting, you know. It wasn't dull business. It was about psychiatric issues. It was about issues that were important to the day, you know, like the a p A, you know, revising its manual when I was there, and so I was there when they decided that homosexuality was not a disease. It was a very exciting place to be. I learned an enormous amount. I learned an
enormous amount about psychiatry. I read everything. I also got to work with Dr Barton on ethics, which was a real wonderful thing, even though it was you know, hard when people are unethical, but it was exciting to learn. I helped to write the first edition of the Principles of Medical Ethics. It was exciting. And not only that, but we got to play bridge at lunch. When Dr Barton left the a p A, he invited Carol to go with him and work at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
Free tuition for us kids. She really wanted to go, but said no because she didn't want to uproot the family she had just remade. She continued to direct the ethics complaint process for patients and psychiatrists, making sure any breach of ethics was fully investigated. Later, though, Carol faced a different boss who reduced her responsibilities and took away her office. I thought my life was over. That's all I could think of that there was not going to
be anything I could do. My life was over. I was not an important person anymore. H But I was glad to leave because it was an uncomfortable last couple of years. I had to see the A p A because my boss, the third medical director, really wanted to get rid of me and did everything but fire me what she felt he couldn't do. So what I got out of suit was I got to create my own job, which was nothing but doing the ethics, and that I would stay until I was sixty five and then I
would retire and I wouldn't have a party. Everybody got a going away party, big going way parties, and I planned most of them. Yes, I did as I said. Oh, I said, you've got to be kidding again, I'm not having a going away party for what And you know it was fine. So I packed up my little box and fortunately, because nobody knew anything about the ethics job but me and I had tried really hard to train somebody. It's very complicated issue, you know, with lawyers and everything involved.
Um so oh, I got to do some consulting for them. I was still plugged into the ethics, which I loved. But I'll tell you, life goes on. It was wonderful. I could get up and drink my coffee and read the newspaper before I even brush my teeth, you know, and I had time just to do things. So us, okay, what's okay? You've been listening to journalist Katie Davis interviewing her mom, Carol Davis. And that's all for this edition of On the Job from Hired to Retire from Express
Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express pros dot com. This podcast is produced by Steve Mencher for Men's Media and Red Seat Ventures. Find us on I Heart Radio and iTunes, where we hope you will leave a nice review that helps other folks find us too, And of course you can listen and subscribe. Wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time on the job.