Chapter Three part one

  

 

 

 

Present Day

    

 

Maggie Sampson was a woman to be contended with both on a professional and personal level.. In the office, her nick name was “Ice”. She was the best closer the commercial division had ever seen, and her superiors knew it.   Nothing had ever been handed to her. All that she was, and everything she was known for was earned and she paid a high price for all of it. This was a fact she knew well.   All of her clients were cream of the crop.    Her team of escrow assistants was the best in the business, and she rode them hard. She expected nothing but the best, and pushed her employees to get it.    She was the vice president of the commercial escrow division, and she earned every bit of her title. Working her way up the ranks from document puller in the title department, she fought hard for every inch she moved forward. After all, she was a formidable woman in a highly competitive man’s world.  

She worked ninety hours a week most weeks and relied upon very little sleep. When most of her co-workers were either sleeping or spending time with their families, Maggie was crunching numbers and noting the changes that needed to be made which resulted in harassing the underwriters in order to close her deals. 

She woke up at four o'clock in the morning, every morning, and reviewed the spreadsheets that were prepared by her assistants the day before. It was her daily routine and it kept her sharp and prepared for the inevitable phone calls from her clients. She refused to be caught unprepared and expected her team of assistants to have the same level of integrity at all times. The television was on an automatic timer which offered background noise while she worked. Due to the early hour that she rose every morning, she rarely paid attention to what was on the television, mainly because there was precious little of any value offered at such an early hour.. The noise helped to distract her from the fact that she had completely isolated her from the outside world.

"It was fifteen years ago today that Anita Hill took Washington, and the world by storm. Coming up next, sexual harassment in the workplace and what employers can do to educate their employees." 

 

The matter-of-fact tone in the announcer's voice echoed out of her television in the next room and caused Maggie to pause for a moment as she reflected on how different things were before the Anita Hill hearings so long ago...

****

August 1, 1987

 

She was almost eighteen when she landed her first assignment at Patriot’s Land Title. Her brother-in-law, Charlene’s husband, was the vice president of acquisitions at Union Alliance Bank, and one of Patriot’s largest customers.   When Maggie refused to go on to college, he called in a favor to Patriot's vice president so she could get her foot in the door.  The title industry is one of the few industries that do not require a degree to succeed.  Regardless of the education level of it's employees, everything in title and escrow is learned on the job, with each employee making their way from the bottom, up.  

Maggie was determined to make a name for herself, independent of her family ties. She was hired into the title department as a micro-fiche document extractor, pulling schedule B and other recorded documents from the micro-fiche films. “Pullers” as they were referred to by the other department employees. She was one of three females in a department of seventeen employees. One was a title researcher who’d been there for almost ten years, and the other was the supervisor of the research department. Neither woman was happy about how Maggie landed her second-level entry position. She had no experience, no working knowledge of real estate or title, and in the beginning had to be shown everything which included how to turn on and use the micro-fiche machine.  She had no idea how to tell the difference between a mortgage, a deed of trust or a property deed, let alone how to print them and place them in recorded order.

Rachel, the title researcher, was given the menial task of showing Maggie the ropes.   She was in her late-twenties, and had an obvious axe to grind with Maggie. Every morning, Maggie was given a list three times longer than her fellow 'pullers', and given half the amount of time to find them, print them, and have them placed, in order, on Rachel’s desk. While the other pullers were surfing the micro-fiche and chatting about their personal lives, Maggie worked double-time just to keep Rachel off her back. The first week, Rachel listed the documents in numerical order, but expected Maggie to print them in the order they were listed in the Schedule B of the title reports. The numbers didn't make sense to Maggie, but it didn't take her long to realize that it wasn't her job to make sense of them. Before Rachel came in each morning, Maggie would make a copy of the title reports on her desk so that she would know the order each list of documents should be in.

Being that she was the only female of six pullers, she was subjected to both direct and indirect harassment of all kinds.   This was long before the Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas hearings. At that time, a woman in a man’s world was expected to either fit in, or leave.  No excuses were tolerated.

“Hey Maggie, I wondered who and how hard you had to pull to get this cushy job?"

"You’re pretty cute, what are you doing after work tonight? Maybe I've got something you can pull too!"

The sexual jokes and innuendos continued on, day in and day out and the most serious of them came from Rachel. Having grown up in a strict “religious” environment, Maggie had never heard the word lesbian, let alone experienced one.

“You know, Mags…you don’t mind if I call you Mags, do you? I have a beautiful apartment all to myself...."

"Are you sure you don't wanna come over and pull on my bear rug..."

"Never mind those jerk-offs you work with.  I could turn you into a real woman..."

Maggie put up with it for almost six months before she'd had enough.  One evening after work, she stopped by the convenience store to grab a bite to eat, and a brilliant idea came to her.  

She made a point of going into the office early that day.  She knew the title officers came in just after six in the morning, so she managed to make it to the office about six fifteen or so.  She planted the items on their desks, and smiled in anticipation of watching the morning unfold.  Everyone arrived to the office about the same time, the guys walked in first.  Maggie walked to the break room for a cup of coffee and had returned just in time.

"WHAT THE F**K IS THIS??!!" Randy exclaimed.   Mike, the guy who sat next to him, busted out laughing, because just as he yelled it out, all the men in the department turned to see Randy holding a Playgirl Magazine.

The next explosion happened just seconds later.

"RUBBERS??!!!  Randy!  You f****n dick weed.  I told you last week that I don't swing that way!" 

 

 

No one but Maggie and Randy knew that Rachel was into women...until that moment.  When she saw the look of mortification on Rachel's face, she excused herself to the ladies room, and laughed until she cried.

 

 

 

  

Reviews

[Arthur Henn]

I had to come back, I don't really know what it is that I like about Maggie, there is an innocence about her that I like and I can not help but what to embrace her character.

Art

[Arthur Henn]

I love this gal, your are doing a great job of bringing her to life. Mrs. Davis you story is moving along well. I'm enjoying it very much.

Art

[Dezaraye]

Yes, yes, this ties in nicely with your first two chapters. :) I'm glad you posted them.

[Bruce Bray]

wow..
well.. so far so good..
it's very obvious so far that maggie has had a tough beginning..
i like the thinking back parts..
you know, while today is actually happening..
i gotta just remember where i left off the next time.

[Dezaraye]

I like this chapter. I wonder, though, if it would fit better either earlier or later ... It seems a departure from what your previous chapters were describing.

Maggie seems like a woman that I could really like and look up to. I like her little prank, that's hysterical! Made me laugh out loud.

[Ken Simm.]

Oh excellent. I am really coming to enjoy Maggie now we have several strings to her bow. Still makes me want to know more. I think I could really like her.