Amy Stevens: I’ll just do a little test blurb here.

Cindy Wass: Okay.

AS: This is Amy Stevens and it’s June 23rd, 2006 [phone rings] and I’m at the office of – do you wanna pause it?

AS: So we’re at the office of Cyndi Wass at PenBay Computer Systems in Hampden, and Cyndi worked at Eastern Fine Paper for quite a few years, and Cyndi I’m glad that you could fit me in.

CW: Thank you, me too.

AS: So I’m going to do things a little differently because I know we’re pressed for time today. So I’m gonna ask you just basically when you started at the mill and how you got started there and then jump right to some more specific sort of women’s questions.

CW: Sure. I started in April 1978, and it was part-time for summer. I got out on the school program early ‘cause I didn’t graduate ‘til June but because I had a full part-time job the school let me out early. And I started out as a receptionist answering the phones, greeting the people that came through the door, and then by June there was a full-time opening and I moved out to customer service at that point in time. And that’s where I started my “long career” was pretty much customer service. I think I was there like thirteen years doing a variety of things, answering the phones, taking orders, sample requests, anybody that wanted to see what our paper was, you know they may want to buy it, and I did typing also, I typed up the orders when the lady would be on vacation. I did a lot of fill-in things, so it was really neat because I learned probably ninety percent of the jobs within that department because I would fill in for this one and that one, including shipping, I did the shipping job, you know filling out the paperwork, sending the orders down to shipping so they could load the trucks and talking to the truckers a lot and different things like that. So it was, it was really neat because it’s like I started on one end taking the order, then I typed it, then I sent it down to shipping, and then I did the paperwork to get it shipped, so it was kind of a round circle type of thing. I started it and ended it so it was kinda neat.

AS: That is neat. Now did you have a lot of interaction with the production folks, or?

CW: Ahh, we did. A lot – we took two different types. One was stock orders. We had a lot of different stock so a lot of customers would buy that. But then we also had customers that would buy production orders, making orders, ones that, oh, say they would want a truckload of a specialty item. Most of the majority of things that we stocked was in sheets, 8 ½ by 11, 17 by 22, something like that. We didn’t stock a whole lot of rolls. And a lot of customers needed rolls, so we did do both types of orders. So when we had to take making orders then we did deal a lot with production because we needed to get dates of when they would have it available and, you know if we had any questions about the opacity of it or the brightness or a particular color, some customers wanted special colors or a special brightness or something like that, so then we also had to deal with technical a lot too. And so being in customer service, we had to deal with a good majority of the part of the mill. And a lot of it went through our boss, which was Edith Campbell, she was a wonderful lady and knew a lot and got along well with everybody, and so she could always persuade people here and there if she needed something and so she was our go-to person, if we couldn’t get what we thought we needed to help our customer then we would go to her, and then sometimes she might have to go to her boss Jack Libby for the same thing. And it’s kind of like what Jack said is pretty much what happened because, you know, he was vice-president of sales. And if you can’t please your customers, you’re not gonna have customers so whenever possible we would always try to do what the customer needed. And there were times we couldn’t. But I would say the majority of the time we were able to please the customer and get it when they wanted delivery.

AS: That’s great.

CW: Yep.

AS: So what made you decide to start working at the mill?

CW: Well, that was almost a no-brainer. It was almost like that’s just what I was going to do. My parents both worked there, I had many, many relatives, cousins, uncles, grandparents, and my mother started when she got out of high school and was there right up on through and so it was just not even a question. I had thought about doing a couple other things like, I loved working with kids, you know with drugs and alcohol and, you know trying to help them out, but I just didn’t see myself going to school to get the degree in order to really be able to do something like that. So it was kinda like, I’m not gonna do that, this is what I’m gonna do. I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps, you know, because that was a pride thing. And I’m very glad that I did it. It was an excellent place to work, many, many friends in all different departments, inside and outside the mill. And so I remember going on the interview, and there was I wanna say three or four of us that were being interviewed at the time. And I knew Donna Holland, she was the human resource person, and I knew her briefly but not a whole lot, so I was really, really nervous. And I knew I had a lot of the qualities that they were looking for because I took business in high school and, but you still just never know. So I was all excited, and I can remember we just lived up on Brewer Street so it was a two-minute walk to the mill. So I got all dressed up and everything and I came running out the front door, and I was kind of a tomboy, so instead of taking the steps I jumped off the steps. Well, it had been raining the day before and there was a great big puddle there [AS laughs] so I slipped and I went down in the mud and it was –

AS: Oh no!

CW: It was very, a bad start. So I’m thinking “Oh now what do I do?” My best friend was there and so between crying and laughing I got up and I called and I said “You won’t believe this but I’m supposed to be there in five minutes or whatever, but I’m a mess, this is just what happened.” So she laughed and she said “Don’t worry, get changed and come on down.” She says, “I don’t care what you look like, I know you at least tried to look the part anyways.” So it started off kinda funny and, but I think that broke the ice a little bit too because we had something to talk about to start off with, so that was good. But, oh I don’t know, there’s just so many stories that I could tell about that place. But we had friends inside the office, but because of being in customer service, I had so many friends outside the office. And –

AS: You mean –

CW: our customers –

AS: the customers –

CW: they were just, yeah. We got very personal with them, you know they knew about our family, I knew about their family, we even got to take trips eventually to see our customers. Each one of us reps, we had certain areas, and I had New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. So we would go out with our salesmen of that particular area and meet with the bigger customers in the area. So it was awesome. I had never really, I’d been to New Hampshire but that’s about as far as I’d been, never flown in my life and here I am flying off to Philadelphia. I was petrified! I knew the salesman very well and kind of considered him my dad in a way and that was Tom Donnelly, and he was just such a gentleman. So I felt very safe once I got there, I was just petrified to get there. And he took us around to the customers and so even after that we became more personal, you know, and friends, and joking, and that is such a key to sales. So we were inside sales versus we had the outside sales. But, you know how well you got along with the customers really helped things tremendously because if we did have a mistake inside, or we were late on an order, you could call them and say, you know, “Hey, I’m really sorry about this but, this is what’s happened.” And they might not be happy about it, but they fully understood that we were there for them, and if something bad happened, they knew that we were doing everything we could to try to fix the matter. So it made things really, it was a good relationship for everybody, so.

AS: It sounds like it. It sounds you are very proud of that.

CW: Very much so, yeah. We did such a good job. I mean of course we had angry customers. But the majority of the customers loved us and we loved them. There were some that were a pain but you’re gonna get that no matter where you go.

AS: Right.

CW: Yeah. And we did a lot of specialty papers too that you look back at, I mean, you know, we did business for Arthur Anderson and Chase Manhattan, you know, a whole bunch, Disney, you know all kinds of things that was just –

AS: Oh wow.

CW: really proud to be a part of too. Yeah. All the direct mailings, I remember when direct mailings became big, I think it was Allen Paper Company in Pennsylvania and they bought tons and tons and tons, truckloads of rolls from us and a lot of it was for direct mailings. So it was neat to understand what your paper was going out to be used for because then we’d in turn get it back in the mail and it’s like, “Whoa, this could have come from us!” you know? So that was a real neat thing too.

AS: Huh!

CW: Yep.

AS: So what did your mother do there?

CW: Well she, whoa! She was in a whole bunch of places at the mill. She was mostly, towards probably the middle of her career there, in administration. She worked for the vice president of sales, and was out in the front office and, it was kind of like, us sitting out back, it was kind of like God was in the front office, you know? [laughs] ‘Cause there was Jack and Lois and Bruce Hamilton, the president and his secretary Ruth and, you know it was kind of like those were definitely the people that you well-respected, you know? And you knew that they were the ones that were running the mill and keeping everything going. You have everybody underneath, everybody’s gotta be a part of it to keep a mill like that size going, but you knew those were the people that you were gonna go to. So I so respected her because she, again, she kinda ran the ship inside where Jack ran it outside. He was in the office, but the majority of the time he was out there selling too, you know. But he did it on his level. He would see the owners and the managers and this and that and go with the salesmen to the various accounts that we had. And so my mother had to keep everything going inside. She would set up all the appointments. If anything would go wrong, [snaps her fingers] immediately he would be on the phone with her and she’d be working something out and, oh plane reservations and just, a lot of coordination for Jack to get him to wherever he needed to be for his business meetings. We would have sales meetings up here and she would be in charge of getting everything prepared for that, you know whether it be the food for the meals, whether it be, you know the fun stuff. We got to go on a cruise a couple times down the Penobscot River and, I can remember we’d have softball games and. And so that too brought the outside guys in to all of us which made us even closer too. Because we got to do some outside activities rather than just totally business. But I just remember, you know, we had meetings at the Penobscot Valley Country Club up there, and the first meeting I ever went to, ‘cause we didn’t always get to go, it was usually management and stuff like that. But the first one that I remember going to, I remember thinking “Wow! She put all this on, you know? Could I ever do that some day?” [laughs]

AS: Wow.

CW: And I did do some things, definitely, when I got out in administration too, but I still don’t think it was ever anywhere near, you know, what she could do and, she had a lot of knowledge, and she just kinda knew what needed to be done. And customers loved her too because she would always have to deal with them through Jack, so, it was very good.

AS: So you said that you went into administration also?

CW: Um hmm. Yep.

AS: That was after customer service, or?

CW: That was, yeah, I went to administration, let’s see, I worked for John Harker and Bob Sullivan. And they were both vice presidents, John Harker was over the fine paper end of it and Bob Sullivan was over the coated products side.

AS: Okay.

CW: So I would work with both of them and their managers, which they each had a lot because it was all the managers with inside the mill. So again, we would set up meetings and I would go and take notes, and I can remember taking notes on things that I had just never even heard of and I’m thinking “How in the world do you write that in shorthand?!” you know? So it was a very interesting job and it was very different from what I’d done because I no longer was dealing with customers, but I was in a different sense. They were all customers with inside the mill, you know, whether it be each little department, or whatever. So I did that for quite a while, then John Harker left and Bob Sullivan took over both fine paper and coated. So I worked with him a long time. And then they made some changes and I decided, Nick Collins who was vice president of finance, he moved out to be vice president over the coater department, and we had worked together for an awfully long time, and he asked if I would go back out there and be their customer service coordinator, I think it was called and, which had to deal with people inside the mill, but also back again with customers. So it was really good, I was back in customer service, but in a different mode, too. It was handling a lot of inside stuff and outside. I set up some different programs where they had service requests because with coated products, we stocked very little. Most everything was made to specifications. So that was more difficult for me than fine paper was because, I don’t know, it might have just been me, but it was a little bit harder to understand, so that took a little longer for me. But we had a lot of big customers, and again we went out and we, I went out with that salesman and visited those customers, so again that relationship got going. ‘Cause there was a lot of different customers than who I’d dealt with before, so it was almost like a whole new base again. But, so that was the last job that I had there, was in the coater sales end of it. And again, it was working with some people that I’d worked with before, but some new people too. And they were all just really great because everybody was there for the customer so it didn’t really matter what department you went to, everybody knew that if you didn’t have a customer, you weren’t, we weren’t gonna be there, so, it was important.

AS: It sounds much more like a small business than a big corporation.

CW: Exactly. That’s how I feel it was, it was really a lot of family and, you know, you always have some—arguments or fights with your family, so you’re gonna have the same thing like that, so some days there were tension, you know, if you couldn’t get what you wanted and you could tell somebody was upset ‘cause you’d been hounding them too long, or [laughs] or vice versa, so. But it was all good because the next day was a brand new day and everyone started all over again, so.

AS: Great.

CW: Yeah.

AS: I’m gonna back you up just a little bit.

CW: Sure.

AS: You said you started at the mill just out of high school.

CW: Um hmm.

AS: Do you think that the fact you had family at the mill helped you get a job there, or was that irrelevant?

CW: I’d like to say it was irrelevant because I think that I was pretty good at what I did. And I don’t, and I think if nobody had been there for family I would have worked just as hard anyways. But you gotta say, you gotta figure, “Hmm. If my mom hadn’t worked there, would I have been that high on that lady’s thoughts?” I don’t know. She’s told me in the past it was all me that I got it. And I, if it wasn’t, I feel that I earned it anyways after I’d been there, well because I kept moving up.

AS: Right.

CW: So I think that was a good thing. But I think that no matter what you do, if you have an in somewhere, you’re gonna have a little bit over what somebody else does. But I do know one of the other interviewees that day had relatives at the mill too. So I just, I was not confident, I, in my opinion I had to go in and sell myself, or I wasn’t gonna get the job. So that’s what I kinda feel that I did.

AS: What types of marketable skills did you have like from, you said you took business courses in high school.

CW: Right.

AS: So what types of things did you need to be able to sell yourself?

CW: Well, a lot of it, the typing skills, I was a good typist, shorthand I was second—well, first or second in my class, me and this other girl went back and forth a lot as to who was the fastest. So that was I know a very good thing to have ‘cause I know my mother used it every single day. And talking with customers it was a lot quicker for me to take the order in shorthand than it was to write everything out. And I think that, I mean we took business math, so we had some accounting end of things, calculator, I could use a calculator fast which is a great thing that they teach. I’m not even sure they teach that anymore. I know they don’t teach the shorthand end of it.

AS: Did you go to Brewer High School?

CW: I did, um hmm.

AS: When I graduated in ’99 they were still offering sort of a note taking/speedwriting course.

CW: Oh, um hmm.

AS: But, you know, it was one of those things that hardly anybody did anymore.

CW: I know and I think it’s so sad because I don’t know what I’d do without it even today. You know, I don’t use it as much as I did back then, and I think when you don’t use something, you lose it. I’m not as fast as I was, and I sometimes have to look at my notes a little bit longer to see “What is that word?” [AS laughs] But I think another thing that I had was the way I was brought up. Mum was very professional in what she did, and I think that just kinda came, was carried on, you know? I think I knew how to act in front of customers, you know, pleasant. I was always told you have to be polite on the phone, so I think that was a real good skill because I’ve heard some people on the phone, and they just don’t make you feel welcome, they make you feel like you’re, you know, taking up their time and things like that. So I think some of, a lot of what I got I know was from my mother. And then a lot was taught from school. And I guess probably that’s it. And being, I guess being raised to care about things. Because if you don’t care about something you’re not gonna do a good job at it, so.

AS: Right. It wasn’t just a job, you really put yourself into it.

CW: Right, right.

AS: I’m gonna stop you for just a second because I just wanna make sure the mic is working. I’m noticing things aren’t looking quite right, so.

CW: Oh.

AS: Okay, picking up where we left off. Did you ever feel during your years at the mill that because your mother was such an important sort of figurehead in administration that added any pressure, or you had to, you know, attain a certain standard, or anything like that?

CW: Ahh, that’s a good question. I guess I’d have to say maybe, I’m not sure. It’s because you would think I would have felt that way, and I think people probably should feel that way, but I just always felt you needed to do a good job no matter what job you were doing. Whether it be me just writing out the sample requests, you know? Or just doing the filing, ‘cause if you file something in the wrong spot it’s gonna take that person behind you so long to get it. So maybe subconsciously it had something to do with it, but it nev—I didn’t really feel that it had something to do with it. It might’ve made me just want to do even better because I wanted to be as good as she was. I’ve been told by somebody, and I never thought this was true, that I’m a perfectionist. And I never thought I was. But when I look back on certain things, I guess I probably am, because to me, you should always do your best and you should always be able to give that customer what it needs. And that’s the way, you know, in customer service that a person is raised. If you’re in customer service, always do what is right for the customer. And some people did that better than others, but that I think again is the type of person that you are. And if you weren’t that type of person, you found out fairly quick, you know, and you moved on and you did something different. So I don’t know, that might’ve had certainly some things to do with it, but I think no matter where I’d been or what I had done I would have tried to be my best.

AS: Um hmm. Were there many women that worked at the mill, either in production or at the offices, when you first started?

CW: Yes there was quite a bit of women actually. I don’t, I don’t know, I might say fifty-fifty that I dealt with. ‘Cause being in the front, when I first started in the front office, there was a couple people in the little switchboard area and there was, I would say there was a good half of women in the front office. And then when I went out back, it was mostly, mostly women in customer service. There was only a couple of men. And I saw that change over the years, there got to be a couple more men, one or two less women. But I still think it evened out. I think in your production area, you had more men because, I’m not exactly sure why, but I know it’s a harder job, you know if you’re gonna be physical with something. But there were definitely a lot of women that worked down on the floors and, you know, you could see the pride in both men and women, and there were some women down there that were just as strong as those men! I wish I could’ve been half as strong! But I think there was a lot of women really, yep, in a lot of different areas—customer service, but like in the sample department there was women there that would get the samples together that you wanted, pack ‘em up and ship ‘em out, and you know there were secretaries all throughout the mill and, different things like that.

AS: If you had to guess, what would you say, you know, how many women would you say worked there out of whatever the total number of employees was?

CW: Oh, I’m a terrible guesser. [AS laughs] But I would have to say, if you’re counting the mill on the floor, [sighs] there definitely was more men but I might say forty percent women?

AS: Oh, great!

CW: Maybe? ‘Cause, you know I, just picturing back now, there was a lot of women in most departments unless you’re talking on the floor, and then I think the majority were definitely men.

AS: And you said in office jobs there were quite a few women.

CW: Yes.

AS: What do you think the ration might have been there?

CW: Um, I would say—see it’s hard because you gotta count management too and most of the managers were definitely men. Edythe Campbell was one of the few management women. But I would still say for people working in there, it was probably fifty percent, sometimes sixty percent, ‘cause like in customer service, it included customer service, the order typists, the shipping, and a good majority of those people were women.

AS: Do you think that that sort of stems back to the days where women tended to go into certain areas like secretarial jobs or teaching jobs or nursing? Or do you think it had more to do with the fact that maybe women are more pleasant to work with [CW laughs] when you have customers, or? Do you have any thoughts on that?

CW: Oh, I think first of all it was probably because more women, that’s kinda the jobs they tended to go in and get. And, but also when you look at it, I think men were harder, women were softer, and when you’re dealing with customers, you do want that soft side, but at the same time you’ve gotta be strong. Because you do have to tell customers no at times, you know? And you need to make sure that they’ve got that picture. Um, yeah.

AS: Did you meet your husband at the mill?

CW: No I didn’t, no.

AS: Okay.

CW: No, but he ended up working there for awhile too.

AS: Did he?

CW: He did, yeah. And he was down in production and also finishing, but he got injured so he couldn’t work there any longer, so that was too bad. But that’s the thing it was, you know, definitely a dangerous place to work. You had to be careful because you never knew when something was gonna go wrong. You know you’re throwing all that wet broke and stuff, and twisting at the same time and, you know the knives, the cutters, I mean there was definitely a lot of—fork trucks even, you know, you had to be careful coming around a corner. All kinds of things, so, there was, it was a great place but you still had to be on your toes at all times. And they did a good job on the safety end of it, they made safety number one. Lots of safety meetings and different things—that’s the funny thing is I watched it develop over the years, you know when I first came there, [imitating gruff, masculine voice] “Okay you have to walk between these lines to get out back to customer service, you cannot deviate, and watch out for fork trucks,” and that was almost it. To where you’re going to training and learning about the different things for safety and that they wanted you to be on the lookout for things. They wanted you to report something if you saw, so as the years went on it definitely got a lot more, you know, noticeable. People were really, safety was becoming more of a, I don’t want to say important thing ‘cause it was always important, but you with OSHA regulations and all this and that it was made to be more thought about every day, and everything that you did. Some things that you did before was a big no-no, you just don’t do that.

AS: Do you think injuries decreased as time went on and there was more safety training?

CW: Um, I think I would have to say I believe so, but really in the beginning years I really didn’t have any idea on the amount of injuries and who got injured, unless something fairly bad happened, you would hear about it, you know, but other than that, the little things that, you know, somebody stubbed their toe and stuff like that I didn’t really hear about. But I’m sure they must have just because of all the rules and regulations.

AS: Um hmm. Was there any type of dress code in the offices where you worked?

CW: Uh, sort of. There was nothing really ever said, but like in the front office you were dressy, you know, you came—like especially my mother. Ninety percent of the time she wore a dress or a skirt, and a lot of the people out in accounting did, and then you came into more where dress pants were an okay thing to do, and I think a lot of people went to that. And out back in customer service, I did the dressy bit for a long, long, long time. And then the last few years, you know business attire has changed, and going through that mill, you know, it would take us seven, eight minutes to get from the parking lot to our office, and that’s on a good day. [laughs] You know, if it was windy and yucky it took longer, but, so and you’d have to walk through that mill—many times, you know, we ruined shirts and skirts and pants and stuff like that because it’s a dirty place to be walking through and if you slightly rubbed up against something, it was gone. So it did get, I’ll say more slack in the latter part of the years where, you know, you might wear jeans once in awhile with a nice looking shirt [Cindy points to her own jean Capri pants and pink t-shirt and whispers “Not these!” Amy laughs] and stuff like that, but, or corduroys, something along that line. Steel-toed shoes, if you ever went downstairs you had to have a pair of steel-toed shoes to put on too, unless you were right within that safety pathway, you were okay. But like when I was in shipping I had to go down to shipping a lot, so it’s like, “Okay, gotta change shoes,” you know ‘cause you’re not gonna want to wear steel toes all day if you don’t have to. They’re hot and uncomfortable, so. But the dress was, nobody was really ever strict. If we ever had a customer coming, Lois always put out a note saying so-and-so will be here on such-and-such a day. That meant clean up the mill, you know, because a lot of times you do have wet broke laying around or ripped paper or something, so it warned the mill to get clean but it also warned everybody else, “Hey we’ve got a customer coming, make sure you’re looking your best.” And that was a great thing to do because they didn’t come all that often, and you don’t wanna be wearing, or it was uncomfortable let’s put it that way, to wear dresses all the time and walking out there in heels, you know, ‘cause that was quite a long ways. Yep.

AS: Now did you have any children while you were working at the mill?

CW: Yes I did. Two girls, the oldest is twenty-three now, and my youngest is eighteen. So, let’s see, Nicky was born in ’83 and I went to work there in ’78. So I’d been there quite a few years. And it was, I went to work green quite a few days. Edythe would come out and say to me, “Oh, you’re not feeling good today, are you?” And I’d be like “Nope!” But you still had that nice long walk out back. So when you got to certain points, if you had an injury or whatever, they would let you park out back. There was a spot out back that they would let people and come up through the back way so the walk wasn’t quite so long. So they would let women who were pregnant--?

CW: Women who were pregnant, I had a few knee surgeries so, you know, different things like that if you have injuries they would let you—there was not really a parking lot out there, they just kind of made a parking spot for you where you could come up the stairs into shipping and it was a lot shorter for you.

AS: Huh, that’s interesting.

CW: Yeah. It was a nice thing ‘cause there were definitely times people needed it. Yeah. So it was very hard because you got six weeks off, which people say is a long time but I think most mothers will tell you it’s not a long time when you have to leave a six-week-old baby to head back to work. And then that makes life much more difficult because now it’s not just you you’re taking care of. If you’re sick, okay, but now you have one child sick, then the second one comes along so, or doctor’s appointments, you know, babies have to go to the doctor’s all the time, so it made life more interesting. I certainly had to take more time off, after you have babies. But they were very good about that too, you know, you had so many days sick time, so many days personal time, and hopefully you stuck within that time frame

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