Easy Now, Impossible Then

When I was 17 [back in the days of manual typewriters], I was thrilled to land a part-time typing job that paid twice as much as any other on campus because it required a minimum of 65 wpm.
As the schoolyear went on, my speed accelerated to 90 wpm, which helped a lot for typing my own papers, too [days without WhiteOut, either, people], so I felt pretty lucky to be there.

One day I was working in the office by myself: no other typists, and my immediate superior off for the afternoon, when The Boss came up behind me and grabbed my breasts.

I flung my chair back and wheeled to one side of the office as he pretended he'd stumbled.

The next day he called me into his office with my superior, saying my work wasn't up to par/wasn't completing my quota/typing speed was down [he showed me the timecode: the hour after the attack when I had locked myself, shivering and puking, in the bathroom until his wife picked him up]. My superior wondered aloud why we were there since my speed was still improving, and The Boss said I was still going to be on probation.

At first I thought it was my fault for wearing a bit of perfume to work, but self-esteem returned, and anger began to percolate through the shame. Once the other typists came back, I talked to the one closest to me [they were all grad students, and she was getting her PhD in psychology] who said he'd pulled the 'stumbling' trick with her, but she'd swatted him, and no trouble since. That led us to interrogating every co-worker; he'd gotten the farthest with the English-as-second-language ones.

We organised a complaint to the University, and we each had to tell our story to a bunch of administrative males.

The disciplinary result?

The Boss was promoted into a cushy office and title where he would be physically separated from 'the girls'.

That was then. Ten years later, we would have called the cops. Now, we would take turns driving his deskset up his ass, THEN calling the cops, his wife and the local news affiliate.

For the first and I hope only time in my life, when an alumnist told me The Boss was dead, I said, '*Good*'.