Ma Bell: Peggenstein The Monster

Peggenstein

The person named Peggy was absolutely the most vile person in our office.  She could have been retired but wanted to squeeze as much money into her retirement as she possibly could.   She was married to an old codger that appeared to be a clone of herself.  I guess that was why they were married.  They had no kids, no pets, just the 2 of them.

Peggy was a tightwad, a cheapskate, and a selfish person.  She was the main troublemaker.  She had a big mouth and said whatever she wanted to say.  Her justification was that she had worked at the company so long that they wouldn’t dare fire her because they would have to pay too much termination pay to get rid of her.  So she got away with murder.

Her job was sorting the mail.  Big whoop, the easiest job in the office.  She probably couldn’t or wouldn’t work where she had to actually use her brain.  You would have thought that her job as Chief Executive Officer the way she talked to people and bossed them around.  And she had dog ears.  She could hear everything.  She made it a point to hear everything.  And then she and Plain Jane would get together and whisper, like two buzzing bees.  They would then get the other office "do nothing," Belle, to join them.  And then they would bring in the boss, Late Faye.  And none of them really liked each other; they would dog each other out behind their backs.  It was a thriving, pulsating, cesspool of trash talk every day.

Peggy was so cheap.  How cheap was she?  She was so cheap that she would bring her lunch every day in a plastic bread bag.  And inside of that bread bag, she would have another bread bag for her sandwich and another one for her chips.  She was the office bag lady.  I had never seen anything quite like that.  After she finished eating her lunch, she didn’t throw her bag collection away.  She saved her bags and reused them until they got so nasty and greasy looking that she would finally throw them away and start over.  She probably had bread bags from 1946 stashed in her house.  Which makes you wonder what her house might have looked like.  She probably hoarded everything.

If we had a birthday party for someone in the office, she wouldn’t participate in chipping in for a gift or a cake.  But she didn’t mind eating the cake.  “Mmmmm, this is a good cake.”  You had to watch her and make sure she didn’t cut some and stick it in her bread bags to share with her husband.  “Look what I got, Honey, free cake.  They were just giving it away.  It’s a little smushed from the bread bag, do you want some?  Because if you don’t, I’ll put it back in the bag and take it to work.”  “I love birthdays.”

And she griped about everything.  It was too hot in the office, turn the heat off.  I would be freezing.  She would keep complaining until Late Faye would walk over to the thermostat.   “It’s already too cold in here.”  That came from me; I would almost be shivering.  I was told that if I would wear more clothes and not prance around in short skirts, I wouldn’t be cold.  Oh, that would hack me off.  I would ask if anyone else was cold, and all of the younger folks would agree with me.  But all of the hormonal troublemakers would say they were melting.  Oh, if only they would.  Of course, they won.  And in the end, they had to put a little cage around the thermostat to keep it from being changed by anyone in the office.  You had to call a maintenance guy and wait for him to change it.  It was a partial victory.  And it was amusing to see them fanning themselves with papers like they were stranded outside in the heat.  And, of course, that caused more tension between us.  From that point on, the shortness of my dresses was a daily topic. 

When I first started working at Bell, I had no idea that we had a union.  Nobody told me, how would I know?  Well, turns out that we did, and one day when I was ready to explode, someone told me to file a grievance.  I just looked dumb.  “We have a union?”  We did.  “Sign me up now.”  And so they did, right in front of Peggy.  Our steward was a salesman and not in the office very much.  He was a sweetheart of a guy, an older gentleman with a soft southern drawl.  I was going to wait until the next time somebody said something to me or at me.  “Come on, say it, SAY IT.”  They did.  I went to Andy and told him I was sick of it, sick of being treated differently.  “Can you fix it for me?”  He could.  He did.  Ha. Ha!  Take that, witches. 

That was going to be my union introduction.  It was going to lead to me becoming very active later on.  I was never going to let anyone be mouthed at and picked on.  It was going to change my life.