No Coffee, But Plenty Of Tea

I live in Australia, I met a lady on the Internet who lived in the USA. In 2005, after we had visited each other and I had met her folks and all that, she came to be with me and we got married. But after arriving, she had a lot of problems as her Vocational College Degree was not recognised in Australia, leaving her with difficulties getting a job.

She was determined and flexible, though, and did some temp jobs — clerical and receptionist kinds of things — using skills she had learned while working at college as a librarian.

She finally got a “real” job as a receptionist/clerk at a company that brokered loans, and she got on with things.

One thing that was always a problem was that sales rep/sharks would have their clients come in, and they would tell the women to make coffees for them. That wasn’t part of their role. So, [Wife] and coworkers were told that they were not to do that; it was up to the salesperson to make the coffee for themselves and their clients. This was part of an initiative to retain women in these roles as they didn’t tend to stay long in what was something of an archaic office.

[Wife] was working and a salesman’s (they called them Financial Advisors but they were the credit business version of the used car salesman class) client came in. She buzzed the salesman, and he came out of his office.

Salesman: “Make some coffees for [Client] and me.”

She tried to be discreet but said that he knew she couldn’t do that. He blew up and went to her supervisor, and she told [Wife] to make the coffees. Later, [Supervisor] called [Wife] into the office and fired her!

Yep, she was fired for trying to do as she was told. And then, they asked her to stay on until they got another person to replace her!

For the next two months, she continued to go to work, now able and ready to refuse anything she didn’t want to do, especially coffee making. The same salesman tried once. She said, “No, so fire me.”

They could NOT find a replacement; word of their issues at that company had gotten around the receptionist/clerical field locally. The agency [Wife] had gotten the job through refused to send anyone; she was the third person in a row dumped when the probationary period was nearly up, so the agency was not being paid their commission.

Then, [Wife] was offered a much better job with some real responsibility and standing — and almost 30% more salary. She walked into the office the next day and told them she was leaving at the end of the day. No notice was required, of course.

They still had not gotten a replacement and did not find one for months more, by which time they were trying to replace two of them. Eventually, the company let the woman supervisor go and initiated sensible rules.

My wife never looked back, but we still have a chuckle eighteen years later at how well getting fired worked out for her and how badly it ended for the supervisor who fired her staff for obeying the rules.