Interviewee: Elisha McVay
Interviewer: Amy Stevens
July 27, 2006
Eastern Fine Paper Oral History Project

Amy Stevens: This is Amy Stevens and it is July 27th, 2006 and I’m at the home of Elisha McVay in Old Town, Maine and Elisha worked as an engineer at Georgia-Pacific and so she’s going to tell me a little bit about her experiences there. I’ll start out with just real basic questions like can you tell me when you started working there and what you started out doing?

Elisha McVay: Sure, I started out in September of 2002. I was hired to be the waste water engineer over to the waste treatment plant and I previously had worked for Maine DEP as an environmental engineer as well.

AS: Where did you go to school?

EM: University of Maine.

AS: You did.

EM: Yes, in chemical engineering.

AS: Interesting and what year did you graduate there?

EM: 1999.

AS: So can you tell me what it was like to start at Georgia-Pacific, like what a typical day would consist of?

EM: Oh, it was really exciting at first. I actually had taken a lot of pulp and paper classes and I had a scholarship from Pulp and Paper Foundation while I was in school and I always wanted to work in pulp and paper. The year I graduated, it wasn’t a really good year for graduates. I think we did place everybody but we struggled I believe to place everybody. So I ended up, I got an offer from the state in August after I had graduated and the offer sounded fantastic. It didn’t matter how much money they were going to pay me. The state doesn’t pay quite as well as paper mills do but I worked there for three years and was very excited to get back into pulp and paper because I had really been interested by the process. I had co-oped at, it was Georgia-Pacific at the time, it’s Domtar now in Woodland, Maine.

AS: It’s called what?

EM: Domtar

AS: Is that D-O-M-T-A-R.

EM: Yes. It’s Baileyville, Maine down by Calais and I had really been fascinated by the process. I was very excited to get back into a pulp and paper mill and actually I was pretty excited to get into water as well. My background environmental had been in air quality with the state so I was pretty excited to learn a new field of environmental engineering. My typical day I usually would go out, I had five waste treatment plant operators that I supervised and they typically had four operators; one for each shift and then we had a spare. So my typical day, I would usually start by going out to the treatment plant, finding out how things were running out there, finding any issues or problems that we had. We would have a nine o’clock production meeting where we would discuss any issues and stuff like that so definitely needed to get out there and find out what my issues were before the meeting so I could discuss if we did have a problem, what the path forward would be on that. Typically after that I would do meetings in the afternoons and any environmental job tends to have a lot of paper work so I try to take care of my paper work and stuff like that in the afternoon, planning and all that stuff; as much as I could try to get the hands on stuff out of the way in the morning.

AS: So what types of problems might come up?

EM: Well actually at the Old Town mill we tend to, or had tended to run well below our compliance limits in our water license. It’s a very big treatment facility. It’s a 24.4 million gallon per day processing capacity and the mill tended to run depending on the time of year, we used more water in the summer then we do in the winter but we tend to run anywhere’s between maybe 8 to 17 million gallons per day so we certainly had a lot of excess capacity there, so we didn’t do a whole lot of chasing down compliance. You know, we didn’t have a lot of instances where we’d be very concerned about meeting compliance efforts. We certainly track those numbers daily but normally we are well below. We ran about a third of our limits so we certainly operated well below that but a lot of it would be maintenance issues. You know, we’d have a pump that had failed that we needed to get back in order. In any kind of waste treatment facility, it’s very typical to see several of the same type of equipment lined up so you always have a backup; especially any time you’re looking at environmental compliance you want to make sure that you have a backup available if you need to use it. So we do a lot of maintenance planning and hopefully you get it in your preventative planning and if you don’t you go to your backup and do that. I’d say for the most part it would be just maintaining the equipment, making sure that we inspect it on a regular basis and stuff like that.

AS: And how many people did you say worked under you?

EM: Well when I worked in supervising the waste treatment plant, I had five. [End Track 1, Begin Track 2]

EM: And I didn’t always have five. A lot of times, we had a hard time keeping spares; like we’d lose one person and it takes awhile to get another spare in there because they have to be released from the job that they are doing once you find somebody and select them. Then they get to try the job for about, I think it’s for thirty days if I remember right and they have the option to go back to their old job. You know it’s just the way it is in the union contract. Sometimes we’d get somebody that would try it out and they’d decide that that area wasn’t for them and they’d want to go back to their previous job and then we’d start all over with the process. A lot of times we operated with only four people. If somebody got sick, a couple times actually we operated with three operators which is really hard on the guys because they work a lot of overtime and they get tired. They work twelve-hour shifts. Those times would be a little bit difficult, actually I don’t think I ever really, towards the end I think I did, a little bit actually, operate with five people but for the most part we never really had five people. Let’s see, after four months at the mill I had to leave for military training and when I returned about five months later I had been transferred to the air engineer position and in that position I had one direct report; I had an air technician.

AS: Is that a change you were happy with?

EM: It wouldn’t have been my first choice but I really did understand it was the right thing to do for the mill. We had, at the time, we had laid off some salaried people and our resources were shorter. Our resources were not what they had been before and we needed to make adjustments for that and the original plan was when I was hired as the water engineer, we had an entry level engineer that was going to pick up the air program eventually. At that time our supervisor picked up safety as well as environmental so he didn’t have the resources to do both and he needed to reallocate. He had been working on primarily the air when he was training the other person. I had the background in air quality so he knew he could just throw me in there and I could go right to work, especially with the air program it takes a long time to pick it up. So you really can’t have an entry level person functioning on their own. So it really was the right thing to do for the mill, I wasn’t incredibly happy about it at the time but I understand it was the right decision.

AS: Now how did that differ from the water that you had done before?

EM: It is different. The requirements and the regulations are all different. I was a little disappointed because I was just getting the water rigs down and feeling like I could work more on my own in that area and I was starting to get comfortable in it. Air rigs are, they tend to be a little more technical than the water regulations and I think one of the things, one of the things that I think is pretty big is water quality is tangible to most people and air quality isn’t. So it’s very, I find it more difficult to get people, especially when working with the area managers to get a good response. You know you go to somebody and you say, ok we have this issue with the air quality and we need to address it. It’s not meaningful to a lot of people so and you know it’s more tangible in their mind to think of oh, we don’t want to send out dirty water but there’s a lot of misconceptions about what air quality really means. I know a lot of people just in the public driving by they see the smoke stacks and they think that it’s dirty air polluting, in fact most of what you see, the actual smoke is just steam and the stacks that have the actual pollution coming out of them a lot of times you don’t see anything.

AS: That’s interesting. So even within the mill folks didn’t tend to be as concerned about air quality as water?

EM: I don’t think it was that they weren’t as concerned about it, I think it was more they didn’t understand it so a lot of times it was very difficult to get people to work with you on something they don’t understand. Towards, especially towards the last couple of years you know everybody was so tight on time, it just was so difficult to get somebody to sit down and address an issue especially preventively in the air quality. We did have a couple that understood it real well. We had a few that had a real good handle on it, Jason Luis was fantastic. He had a very good understanding on the boilers and how [End Track 2, Begin Track 3]

EM: when you operate them in different ways, the effect that it would have on air quality. He had a very good handle on that but a lot of the people, a lot of the operators is very technical. A lot of the operators didn’t understand the differences and they’d have a pretty good understanding you know because they’ll see the, you know on their DCS screen they’ll see that it goes up or down so they’d have a very good handle on when I do this, this parameter goes up and when I make this change it will tend to go down. They didn’t necessarily understand why that was happening a lot of the time. You’d try to, we’d know when we had an issue and I’d try to go up there and help them trouble shoot and you try to tell them, you know or suggest this is what’s most likely going on and perhaps if we do, you know try this or that you know and they’re not as receptive to it because they don’t really understand, they don’t have a good handle on what you’re saying but they know what their experience is especially if it’s something that conflicts with their experience, they would be very hesitant to make changes because they are responsible for what’s going on. To them it was a big, it was hard to trust somebody that you know is coming up there especially, I wouldn’t normally work with them unless there was a problem happening. The hourly guys I wouldn’t see them too much.

AS: I’m going to back you up a little bit and just ask you how did you get interested in chemical engineering?

EM: Actually the Pulp and Paper Foundation had this summer juniors program where they bring kids to the campus in the summer and it was, I think it was maybe a five day, five day thing or three day exercise but where you’d come up, you’d stay in the dorms and they’d put your through all kinds of problem solving. I’m very into problem solving. I like to understand how things work and that sort of thing so I came up for this juniors program. You’d come up in the summer and the campus is so pretty and they feed you the good food in the commons and they put you through all these exercises and they’re really a lot of fun but it kind of gives you an understanding of what engineering really is and I really had a lot of fun at that. It was a great time.

AS: Was that like a junior year

EM: It was students participate the summer between their junior and senior year so that was a lot of fun. I liked that a lot and I thought chemical engineering sounded very challenging so and you know it would make me sound like I was smart. You know when you’re seventeen years old that’s important to you I guess. Yes, I thought it sounded challenging and it sounded like something that would be a really good opportunity. When I applied for the pulp and paper scholarship it was a full tuition scholarship so that pretty much sealed the deal.

AS: Now what high school did you attend?

EM: I went to Sumner Memorial High School in Sullivan, Maine.

AS: Ok.

EM: It’s a small town.

AS: So you are a Maine person.

EM: Yes.

AS: Were you intimated at all by the math and science that goes along with engineering? I know a lot of women say that.

EM: Not at all actually. I was kind of funny. I was always very strong in math and science. I really didn’t, I was very good in English but I didn’t care for it. I thought it was kind of boring. The math and science was the fun stuff to me especially because we would have labs or whatever we’d get to do hands on stuff. But I actually have a little bit of a competitive gene in me like with our family. I always had the good grades. I have two brothers and so I never really thought that I couldn’t do anything. I guess I have them to thank for that. I never thought that I couldn’t do anything because I always would be, I don’t know, you know how it is with siblings. You never have much respect for each other so I would always look at my brothers and be like if he can do it, I can do it better. So I think that was kind of, growing up with only brothers really helped me a lot I think to not have those boundaries between men and women.

AS: That’s an interesting thought actually.

EM: And to be honest I actually was shocked when I got out in the work force and some people do have those gender biases. I was absolutely shocked that somebody would say I couldn’t do something because I was a female because being a girl it never had mattered. I mean if my brothers had said that I would have been, want to bet, you know, I’ll prove you wrong.

AS: So you never grew up with that notion.

EM: No, and my parents never ever you know said well you can’t do this or you can’t do that because you’re a girl. I never heard that growing up so to me I was very shocked when that actually happened to me out in the real world. I’m like what do you mean I can’t do that.

AS: Did that happen to you right away?

EM: Oh I think I had a job in high school actually probably was the first time that I worked at a convenience store and you know the females were cashiers and the males pumped the gas and you know that’s how it worked. I think I wanted to swap a shift with somebody and the manager had said well you two can’t work together because you’re both girls and we need somebody who can pump gas and do the propane. I’m like well I can do that. He’s like no you can’t. I said well I’m going to now and actually I pretty much, it was like a challenge to me to learn every job there and actually by the time I left I had learned all the jobs. [End Track 3, Begin Track 4]

EM: So I think I was one of his favorites because he could pretty much put me anywhere you know as far as on the scheduling. I was pretty versatile by the end of it. I know after that we did have you know, two females would work together at the same time.

AS: Oh that’s great.

EM: I don’t think it had ever been done before. It was just, somebody told me I couldn’t do it. I’m like what do you mean I can’t do it, now I want to. Never would have thought of it before probably.

AS: So were there instances of that at Georgia-Pacific?

EM: I think there was never anything where I was told by management that I couldn’t do anything. I think there were probably some attitudes out there that oh she probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about and that’s always hard to say why somebody thinks that but in my opinion yes I think there were a couple people that thought because I was a female that I wouldn’t understand you know the mechanical stuff or whatever, you know because that tends to be a more male dominated realm especially in the maintenance end. But you know, there’s some people the more you work with them you know they kind of get the feeling or the understanding that, you know you kind of show them that you do know it. I know there was one maintenance supervisor out at the mill that I would have to work with for the waste treatment plant and he always kind of, I’d say something in our planning meetings that I think this might be the problem, he’d always kind of blow it off; oh no that can’t be it, oh no. I would get really irritated with it. At one point we had one specific thing that we could see in our solids balance that we had something wasn’t right and looking at the solids balance and taking samples out in the different sewers and comparing I felt very strongly that we had something re-circulating in there because obviously the solids are coming from somewhere and they didn’t appear to be coming from our inlet stream so he and I kind of bickered a little bit. I said I thought something was leaking somewhere and he said no, it’s not leaking or you don’t know what you’re talking about and you know I’ve worked out here for 20 years and I know this area. There’s no way anything’s leaking and for that I can’t really say if it was a female thing or if it was an experience thing because I was very young at the time, you know especially comparatively speaking with his experience. But pretty much it came right down to it and I just laid it out and said well I’m the supervisor of this area and you’re the maintenance supervisor and your job is to support us and this is what I want done and I want it looked at and if we determine that, if we look at it and we determine that’s not the issue then we’ll move on and try to figure out the next thing. But we took it a part and it was leaking and so we did have the solids re-circulating over and over through the sewers so after that he really kind of loosened up a little bit with me and he kind of would, he’d be a lot more open minded after, that was a particular turning point with the two of us. Unfortunately he was laid off shortly after that so I had to start all over with the next person.

AS: Did you have similar problems with the next person?

EM: I don’t think they were as straight forward with the next person. I’d have the similar thing of I’d bring something up you know what I thought was the issue and he’d say no I don’t think that’s it but he wouldn’t really say, he wouldn’t pull the experience card or anything. He’d just be well we’ll look at it, you know we’ll get back to you. So he just was a little more, he wasn’t quite as straight forward as the other person was. He’d kind of be more round about like we’ll look at it, that’s our job, we’ll look at it and we’ll get back to you. Just kind of didn’t really allow me to be as hands on as I wanted to be or he was a little more resistant to it.

AS: Were there many female engineers when you worked there?

EM: There were a few. I know we had one in process controls. She was extremely capable, very knowledgeable; one technical engineer and we previously had had I forget what her position was. I think she was a bleach plant supervisor and she had moved to corporate actually probably maybe a year and a half before they shut down the mill. She was extremely capable as well and then we had another engineer that was a trainer for the recovery boiler, which you really have to have a good understanding of the recovery boiler to be able to train on it because there’s a lot of safety issues there.

AS: Now what would be the break down do you think as to how many men and how many women in engineering or supervisory positions?

EM: Sure [End Track 4, Begin Track 5]

EM: when I was in, actually when I was in college our class was about 50/50 but I’d say maybe ten years ago it was almost exclusively male and actually your environmental engineering fields I think still are more male dominated. Chemical engineering when I went through was about half and half. When you get to the mill obviously you have people that have been working there for years so it still is male dominated. As far as supervisory positions, we had the one female engineer that was a supervisor. All your salary positions, most of them almost all are supervisory, you supervise hourly people and almost all of those, I actually think at the time that I was there, I was probably the only one that had direct reports aside from Patty who eventually went to corporate but I do know that one of those engineers really didn’t want to be promoted.

AS: Really.

EM: Yeah, her family was more important to her and she didn’t want to put in, she didn’t want to work the kind of hours that were typical for a position that manages other salaried employees. The other one, the one that was a trainer for the recovery boiler, she previously had been in a supervisory position and she had taken the training position where she doesn’t have direct reports. It was my understanding that she was very happy in that position but I also think that she would have jumped at the opportunity to supervise; to move up and supervise an area of the mill. I think she would have been extremely pleased with that and I think that’s the track she was on when we shut down. I think that was the ultimate plan for her. Let me think, and like I said Patty was, yeah she was, supervised other management personnel before she transferred to corporate.

AS: So not necessarily all engineers were in supervisory positions?

EM: Depending on the position, there are some, there were a few positions that didn’t have any direct reports what so ever. My direct reports were hourly. When you get to, it’s kind of your next level as an engineer is you have salaried employees reporting to you as well and that’s sort of a different tier, I guess you’d say is kind of looked at.

AS: So were there quite a few men as well in engineering?

EM: Yes. We had quite a few engineers. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head but

AS: But more men than women?

EM: Oh certainly yes.

AS: Do you have a sense the over all break down of the mill employees in general?

EM: I don’t and actually to be honest you know what I’ve been talking about has been on the pulp side. I didn’t deal much with converting but they did have a higher percentage of women over on the converting side in the finished products.

AS: Interesting.

EM: Yes, and I really don’t, I really didn’t have a good understanding of their organizational structure because I didn’t work with them a whole lot. Certainly on the environmental side when you get into your finished products there was a lot less, you know your heavy hitters on pollution are in the pulp mill.

AS: Did you have women working under you?

EM: I did not. I had all males.

AS: And how was that?

EM: It was interesting you know I mean the guys, I was 25 when I first started working there and you know the guys are all my dad’s age. You know they have kids probably that are older than I am and their previous supervisor had been a female as well and I know that they did work fantastically well with her and from everything I’ve heard she was an excellent supervisor and I know the guys thought really highly of her.

AS: So you had a nice precedent.

EM: I did. I did. I think that made it a lot easier on my end as far as coming in because they had worked with a woman before and she was extremely confident and they had worked well with her and I think that helped a lot. I think it could have been a lot more of a challenge if I were coming in to a previously male dominated position where you know some people have a problem working for women and to be honest some women have a problem working for other women and it’s not just a male thing. But I think that the engineer that was the supervisor there before me, I think she really paved the way pretty well so and she worked hard and she was really well respected within the mill.

AS: You mentioned a couple of guys that you worked with that based on their years of experience didn’t really want to trust your opinion on what was going on.

EM: Right.

AS: Did you have any other sort of problems working with [other men]?

EM: I would say I never really had a problem with the guys underneath me. It was more your [End Track 5, Begin Track 6]

EM: more of the people that I had, the other salaried people that I had worked with, some of the hourly's I think had an issue with working with me as a female but they did not report directly to me. They would be the people who worked on the equipment or operated the equipment and that was again more on the air side when I’d go to work with them on something.

AS: So did you have to report to anybody?

EM: I did. I reported to the environmental manager.

AS: Was that a man or a woman?

EM: I had two supervisors there and they were both men.

AS: Any problems in that area?

EM: My first, on the female end I would say probably not. My first supervisor was an excellent manager and he really knew his stuff and he worked at the mill for a long time and he knew the mill inside out and he knew the regulations inside out and he actually was a very good manager. My second supervisor came from a different paper mill so he actually was brand new to our mill. He didn’t quite have the mill knowledge. He didn’t have all the experience, he didn’t have experience in every field of environmental so, as opposed to my first supervisor had actually worked hands on in each different area on the water side, the solid waste, the air side. The second person didn’t quite have as well rounded experience and he definitely wasn’t as good on the people end. He and I didn’t get along so well but again I don’t know that it was necessarily because of me being a female. It could have been, it could not, you know. I was his only female engineer. He had another female that reported to him and she was on the safety side.

AS: So were you a salaried person?

EM: Yes.

AS: So you were not involved with the union?

EM: I was not a member of the union but any time that I dealt with when my reports were hourly you know that’s something that I had to be aware of, the union and how it works and you know any good manager needs to have a good understanding of the union and be aware, and you need to be familiar with the contract and you need to know what your workers rights are and what their responsibilities are in order to effectively manage them.

AS: Right. Did you have any accidents or anything that happened either to you or around you while you were working there?

EM: I actually was very fortunate that when I supervised that area there were actually no incidents when I was over in that area so I was very fortunate. I believe in the time that I had been transferred out to do air I think they did have one safety incident; nobody was seriously injured. I really don’t know the details of what had happened because I wasn’t over in that area at the time so I wasn’t involved in the investigation or anything like that.

AS: Can you tell me a little bit about what types of accidents could happen in the areas that you worked? Did you work a lot with chemicals, with machinery with, I don’t know what types of things…?

EM: Yes, certainly there are those hazards. Those hazards are there but I think the mill did an excellent job of training so that anybody who’s in that area would understand what the hazards were and we did have chemicals in the area and we do have machinery, we have a lot of machinery and I think in years ago it was a bigger hazard. Today they’ve you know because they’ve worked on it for so many years and they’ve really engineered a lot of them out. I mean they have guards in place so that you know pinch points are a big one. You know anytime you have moving parts, drive shafts even, you know things can get wound around those and so if you have a piece of loose clothing, it can get wound around it and you get pulled in and that sort of thing.

AS: And you worked around machinery like that?

EM: I didn’t do a lot of working in the plant until it shut down because the operators are the ones that you know according to their contract, they were the ones that do the hands on.

AS: But there was always a chance that one of the people that reported to you might get pinched.

EM: Right and those hazards are there just because you have equipment there. Like I said we have a lot of guards on it to prevent stuff like that from happening.

AS: As a manager did you have to have sort of a plan of action if something like that [End Track 6, Begin Track 7]

AS: should occur?

EM: Yeah, we all had training on how to do an incident report and what, you know if you have an injury what steps need to be taken. We would have safety audits where we’d walk around and usually you tried to get people from different areas to walk around an area they don’t normally work in to get a fresh set of eyes. A lot of times if you work in the area, you kind of don’t see things; you see things you know how you’re used to them and not necessarily you wouldn’t necessarily pick up on something new. So we tried to get into different areas to do safety audits to try to pick up you know get a fresh set of eyes on it and see if there’s something that could be identified as a potential hazard that could be either eliminated or engineered to make it safer or just identified as a hazard and communicated. Oh actually we did have a safety incident now that I think about it when I was a supervisor. We had a chemical reaction and luckily nobody was hurt but it did count as an incident because gases had mixed and it released chlorine gas. It was a very small amount of gas but it was in an enclosed area. The operator knew that that was a potential hazard and he did have his respirator and he just put on his emergency respirator and he exited the area. It was an exothermic reaction and there wasn’t enough water present to absorb the heat that was generated.

AS: So what did they do to get rid of that? Does it just dissipate?

EM: Yes, they just provided ventilation for the area. It was a very small amount and it wasn’t, how do I say it, we are limited to the chlorine gas that we can emit from the mill and it is extremely low and we did some calculations and we weren’t even close to that so it was a very miniscule amount but if you’re right next to it, it doesn’t take much to breath it in and get you know irritation. Potentially if you, you know chlorine gas if you breath it in it displaces air you know it could be a very serious, it could have been a very serious incident but I think the training that the guys had and the personal protective equipment he was carrying. You know thankfully nobody was hurt, nobody was even injured at all but because we had an unintended release of gas we consider it an incident.

AS: Did you and your staff have to wear safety equipment or have a dress code of some kind?

EM: Yes, every area has certain requirements for personal protective equipment. In my area they’re required to wear steel toed shoes and safety glasses. They were required to carry a respirator. They were not required to wear hard hats in that area. Oh and depending on the job that they were doing sometimes they’d be required to carry a pass port to look at different gases.

AS: Oh really.

EM: Yes, depending on what the activity was and that was typical during a shut down situation.

AS: Now can you tell me a little bit more about the gases and the chemicals just because I have a very lame knowledge in chemical engineering. What would you be doing with the gases? Would you be using them to test or would that be part of the paper making process

EM: Well in the waste water treatment plant we don’t really do much with gases but your gases can be a by-product in the area. In the different areas are different and I really couldn’t tell you about other people’s areas but in the treatment plant hydrogen sulfide gas is one of the main gases that’s generated. They did have H2S meters on each level in their work area so they had alarms and if an alarm went off they were required to exit the area and get a team up to take readings and you know verify is it a calibration problem with the monitors or really was there gas present and that’s all levels are set by OSHA as to what’s a safe level to work in for a twelve hour shift, what’s a safe instantaneous level and pretty much they were required to exit if, I think our standards were a little bit stricter we required them to exit before it got to the limit; the permissible exposure limit for a twelve hour shift for a certain gas.

AS: So that never bothered you or worried you working around gases and chemicals like that?

EM: Not really just because we’re trained on it and we know what the hazards are and we know what to do if we’re in that situation but it’s, I’m trying to think how to say it, it’s been looked at a lot and the company really, it’s in their best interest to keep us safe and they want us to go home safe [End Track 7, Begin Track 8]

EM: so we’ve had a lot of training and we have a lot of measures have been put into place. We worked quite a bit and even before I got there they worked quite a bit on sewer reactivity to make sure you know if you have different things going in the sewer particularly your hydrogen sulfides. Your pulping process, you release sulfides that are in the process water that’s going in the sewer. At the treatment plant, we add acid to control pH because that’s one of our, that’s one of our environmental parameters. We have to keep pH within certain limits and it tends to be higher so we do have to add acid. Well acid and sulfides will react and they create hydrogen sulfide gas and that can be a deadly gas so that’s something that we actually had looked at. There is acid is used in different areas of the mill so that’s one of the things we looked at; where is it possible that acid could enter the sewer. We don’t want it reacting in the sewer and coming up through a vent or something where people are standing so that was one of the things that had been looked at at great length – is sewer reactivity. I’m sure tons of stuff before that but a huge effort really is made to keep anything that’s going to react separate and to keep it controlled and a lot of measures we had sulfuric acid to lower pH and it’s a very corrosive you know a chemical that can cause a lot of damage. You definitely don’t want to get it on your skin and it can do damage on other equipment if it comes in contact with it so that’s something that we really had put a lot of measures in place. We had alarms if the level in the tank drained too fast, it would set off an alarm so that we’d know that the guys would have to go out and check it to see if it was leaking. We had, and this is very standard and actually it’s required but a secondary containment so that if the tank did leak, it stays contained. It doesn’t go into the ground and stuff like that so there really are a lot of measures put into place. I’d say to be honest I really never was nervous you know walking around just because I knew what those measures were.

AS: I just had a related question and lost it so hopefully it will come back to me.

EM: It’s the cat. She’s very distracting.

AS: She’s very cute. Were there any types of training or opportunities for career advancement in your part of the mill?

EM: To be honest it’s hard to say, I was there a little less than four years and in that time period I wouldn’t have expected to move to the next level. You know maybe after probably I’d say five to seven years would be a normal time frame.

AS: But there were places to move up to if you had been there longer?

EM: It depended. I mean if we had a higher turnover than you’d have more open positions and there weren’t a whole lot of positions that came open while I there. You know and especially in a situation where you tend to be laying people off which they did do throughout the time that I was there. It’s a lot more difficult to move up because you have less of a need.

AS: Who would typically be laid off first? What types of jobs?

EM: I’m not sure that’s a question I could answer very well because obviously I’m not, I wasn’t in HR so I don’t know. I would want to say anything that we had any kind of redundancy in. If we had two people that had similar responsibilities, they’d try to condense when they could.

AS: Was anybody that you worked with laid off while you were there?

EM: Oh yes.

AS: Oh right you said the one guy.

EM: Yes.

AS: And they just wouldn’t replace that position. They would just add responsibilities to the others.

EM: Yes, they’d sort out the responsibilities to the remaining people. You’re not going to argue too much about it because you’re the one who stills has a job.

AS: Right. How was the salary and benefits working there?

EM: Initially good to come in not having had water experience to come in where I came in. I was very pleased where I came in. I thought it was very fair on both ends. When I transferred to air I think that was probably one of my biggest issues with being transferred; there was no salary adjustment. I had quite a bit of experience in air and I never would have left my state job for that salary to do air with the experience I had in it so I was not very happy about that.

AS: So you actually took a significant [End Track 8, Begin Track 9]

AS: pay decrease.

EM: I didn’t take a pay decrease. I made the same amount of money but for a position that would have a higher, that would be valued higher probably if I say went to another mill or another position. To be honest, I was not very happy with the pay increases. I think my highest increase I got might have been two and a half percent.

AS: How often would that happen?

EM: Once a year. Nobody, it was extremely rare if anybody got an outstanding or an above average review. Pretty much you get rated from a one to a five, a five being outstanding. I never heard of anybody getting a five.

AS: Really.

EM: If you got a four, you were well regarded and everybody thought you walked on water sort of thing, like you were really outstanding if you got a four, so pretty much most people got a two or a three. It was you’re a two or you’re a three. If you were a two they were probably looking to get rid of you.

AS: Wow.

EM: So it was very, I don’t know I guess to me it kind of seemed like you know I’m going to work hard, I’m going to get the same rating regardless. That’s a little discouraging knowing you can work really hard and you’re not really, it just kind of felt like you really didn’t get the recognition for it. Yeah, I had for favorable reviews to get, you know to say that you did well, you did your job. You know I’d get some favorable comments in there. They’d throw you a little bit of something but the actual number scheme that they played still you only get the average rating and to get that and then knowing that you worked really hard and to get an increase that’s not keeping up with inflation, it’s a little discouraging.

AS: I can imagine. Do you feel like men and women were paid equally for equal jobs?

EM: I don’t have a lot of direct first hand knowledge. You know they kind of really don’t want you discussing salaries. The rumors that I had heard was that there was a huge disparity there.

AS: Really.

EM: They had, yeah, they had apparently someone had gotten their hands on a list of who was making what for salaries and the women like I said the rumor has it the women were much lower than the males. That’s a little discouraging I guess as well but like I said for what I was started at, I was happy to start that with, for what I was hired for and the experience I had in that field I thought was fair. That’s a very good question as to if other people got the same types of pay raises and I don’t have access to any one else’s pay scale or pay raise information so.

AS: Did you feel personally that there was anything there that you couldn’t do because you were a woman, not necessarily that’s what people were thinking about but did you ever feel…?

EM: I never felt there was any job that I couldn’t do but I’m pretty, I’m the kind of person that I don’t think there’s anything out there that’s so hard that anyone can’t learn it. So if you, I think some people have weaknesses and some people are the type of person that maybe they’re not interested in a certain field and they have no interest in learning it or they’ll let their weaknesses kind of discourage them from it that they’ll say you know to learn this is very maybe math intensive and I really don’t like working with numbers. I’m not good with it and I really don’t think I’d be successful at that. But I think, especially in the engineering field I took a lot of challenging courses and I really don’t think that there’s anything out there that’s so hard that I can’t learn it. Really if you take the time to get into something, get into the pieces and understand the fundamentals than I think most anybody can learn anything they set their mind to. So there was nothing I thought I couldn’t do. There were a lot of things I thought I didn’t want to do that just didn’t interest me or I thought I wouldn’t be happy in that area.

AS: Because of like physical abilities or because of the fact that particular areas were really uncomfortable in some way?

EM: Not so much, just more that like for example, I’ll just use like a risk management program and chemical process safety; I found that extremely boring because it’s a lot of paper work. It’s a lot of theory and there is some getting out in the field but to me it’s not, I’m more [End Track 9, Begin 10]

EM: I like to improve things and I like to make things better and I like to just do, I don’t know that area just I had no interest in at all. It just bored me but it’s very important, you know, it obviously keeps people safe and that is an extremely important area but I just had no interest in doing that myself. That’s just one example but as far as the pulp mill I would have been very open to working in the pulp mill and process lab and stuff like that

AS: Let me just stop you for a second and flip the tape over.

EM: Sure.

AS: Did you ever have a sense that there were areas in the mill that maybe women tended to shy away from for whatever reason? Like you sort of said you would be open to the pulp mill so I’m wondering does that imply that other women might not have been open to working over there?

EM: No, not at all. I know my friend Amy worked there and she actually was a technical engineer in the pulp mill. She enjoyed it quite a bit and she was really good at it. She really knew her stuff; and like I said recovery boiler, we had one woman that knew that inside out. She had a lot of hands on experience and she had been a shift supervisor so anytime you do something like that you get a lot of, evaluating problems is where you get into an area. Any time you have a lot of problems, running to this problem or that problem you learn a lot about how stuff works, especially if it’s a complete pain, you remember it.

AS: Yeah, definitely. So I guess because, well let me ask you this, were the other women engineers that you worked with, were they of similar age and background, educational background, experience?

EM: I believe the other female engineers that I worked with, I believe they all were chemical engineers and I was the youngest.

AS: You were?

EM: Yes.

AS: By a significant amount?

EM: I couldn’t say their ages for sure. I know, I think one, the next youngest was probably three years older than me and then the oldest female engineer that I worked with was maybe 10 or 13 years older than me.

AS: Was there any kind of commodore amongst you women engineers?

EM: Oh yeah, I think, I don’t know there was personally you know we’d have a ladies night. We’d go out you know, go out to the restaurants or whatever for an evening out and a lot of us actually were good friends but I don’t think there was any kind of you know like favoritism or anything like that in the work place. I think we were all pretty objective as far as that goes, you know but we all for the most part worked pretty well together. I didn’t work personally closely with many of them. I think Amy and I had worked on a couple of projects together and we worked very well together but I wouldn’t say that it was kind of like, like say we were having a meeting and there was a disagreement, it’s not like all the girls banded together or anything like that. It was very technical and very you know, this is what my understanding of the process is. This is my understanding based on my background is but again a lot of the meetings, there would only be one of us sometimes.

AS: Do you know of any women that worked in the mill and met boyfriends or spouses or anything like that?

EM: We had one, Bill and Patty Lovejoy. I don’t know if it’s ok I use names or not.

AS: I think I have Patty’s name anyway.

EM: Yeah. Patty and Bill met actually when she was a co-op and I don’t know if it was because there was a rule against dating co-op’s; there may have been. The day after she got done as a co-op, she called him up and asked him out on a date. They ended up getting married and she ended up working there and he actually probably right about the time I started he went and took a job somewhere else. I think it was Casco Bay Energy or something like that and she remained at the mill and then, because I think they were kind of a little concerned that if the mill shut down they’d both be out of work and then eventually she went and took a job with corporate; so they actually both have jobs now and the rest of us don’t. [End Track 10, Begin Track 11]

AS: Did you ever hear of any sexual harassment or any other kind of discrimination that happened at the mill?

EM: Not that I know of first hand and like I said where all of my direct reports were male it really wasn’t applicable for me and I wouldn’t have been involved in it if I wasn’t directly effected by it or one of my direct reports effected by it. So I couldn’t say if anything like that ever happened but it was nothing that I was aware of.

AS: You never experienced any cat calls or teasing or anything like that?

EM: Sometimes we’d tease each other but I’m pretty laid back and easy going. It wasn’t anything that I thought was inappropriate or that made me feel uncomfortable so you know I mean, it depends on your outlook I guess but anything that I experience I took as a compliment. It wasn’t anything distasteful or anything like that you know.

AS: Did you have to go through any kind of initiation rituals or pranks when you started at the mill?

EM: No.

AS: No.

EM: No.

AS: Nobody gave you a hard time at all?

EM: A lot of people gave me a hard time but

AS: But nothing too specific.

EM: Well nothing that I should feel special about because the people who give you a hard time pretty much generally give everybody a hard time so.

AS: Ok.

EM: So you don’t feel too special about something like that.

AS: Do you have any children?

EM: I do not.

AS: Did you know any of the women that worked there, did they have children while working at the mill?

EM: Most of them did I think.

AS: Really.

EM: The other one that was close to my age was married but had no children and I think everybody else that worked there. Again there was some in converting. I think one left after she had her baby but most of them did have children.

AS: [*Static* ] or any child care.

EM: I couldn’t tell you. I know women went out on maternity leave but I don’t know many details, how long and what the benefits were.

AS: Ok.

EM: I think it was similar to short term disability. I honestly do not know very much about that.

AS: That’s fine. Can you tell me a little bit about your military leave, what did that involve?

EM: I actually had just joined the army national guard and I had to go for initial entry training.

AS: Were there regulations about clothing or hair that you had to comply with. I know you told me about some of the safety regulations.

EM: They had a couple things, if you were out in the mill you had to be careful about your hair. It had to be pulled back so that you know if you leaned over it wouldn’t get caught in any machinery. I did have long hair at the time but I couldn’t stand having it in my face so I would tend to have it back in accordance but I couldn’t tell you the specifics of the policy because I never really, I just had it up always by accident. As for clothing, certain areas, only certain areas could wear shorts in the summer like the converting areas, not too sure again about the specifics.

AS: So your area could not wear shorts?

EM: I don’t know if they were prohibited from it but none of them just ever did. I really don’t think they were prohibited from it but it wasn’t an issue. Their control room had air conditioning so they weren’t too and it didn’t tend to be a very hot area like your processing, your pulp mill; it tends to get very hot. The waste treatment plant you’re bringing in, you know the processed waters are hot when they come in. They’re about a hundred degrees but they’re about you know probably 75 by the time they discharge so not particularly there’s not a lot of heat coming off of it that it would make you uncomfortable in the process.

AS: So what would you typically wear?

EM: I would typically wear you know depending on the day but if I was going to be out in the mill, I would just wear an old pair of jeans and a shirt I didn’t particularly like. If I had a meeting, I’d wear something a little more appropriate, a collared shirt and slacks that kind of thing, just depending on what was on the agenda for that day.

AS: Right. Were lunch and restroom facilities for men and women separate or integrated?

EM: They were integrated.

AS: They were.

EM: I mean the restrooms were separate.

AS: Right.

EM: But the lunch rooms were.

AS: Were there any areas that other than the restrooms that were separated? [End Track 11, Begin Track 12]

EM: I don’t think so.

AS: Did women have shower facilities?

EM: Yes. I never used them but they were out in the mill. They would have, I believe they had separate showers pretty much everywhere. At the waste treatment plant we didn’t. They didn’t have separate restrooms out there either. It was one restroom. I very rarely used it just because I didn’t have to but I never actually, I mean I certainly was welcome to but I never did use the shower. I lived so close to the mill anyway that it was kind of easier for me if I feel like I smell bad enough at the end of the day, it was easier just to take a shower when I got home. I know a lot of the guys when they got off their shifts, if they had worked the overnight, they’d go out into town and take care of their errands before they went home. They didn’t want to go smelling like the mill. They would shower before they went home. There were some laundry facilities in the mill.

AS: Oh really.

EM: Again I don’t know the details of that and I don’t know how often they were used or what the stipulations- I think they were more for if you had come into contact with something that you really didn’t want on your skin touching your clothing; I think they may have been more for that but they may have been used regularly. To be honest, I never really worked in those areas very much.

AS: Ok, did you work shift work or did you work like a 9 to 5 day?

EM: Normally I would work during the day and a typical day would start about 7, 7:30 for me, usually wouldn’t leave before 5 and then depending on how much I had still to get done sometimes I would stay later than that. We usually worked like half days on Fridays and again if you’re not caught up on your work you’d stay later. Sometimes you worked ten hours on Fridays if you were behind. Sometimes we would do shift work during shut down. Sometimes we would do shift work because again you’re trying, you’ve got, your equipment’s down, you’re not making money so you want to get back up so then you’ve got 24 hours worth of salaried and you supervisor the jobs that sort of thing.

AS: Right.

EM: After the mill closed and they sent the hourly folks home, we had some salaried people on shift work and it was very short. We didn’t, we didn’t do that for very long because eventually we were just a day time operation. Once our equipment was down, there was very little to process. We were able to only process the treatment plant during the day.

AS: How often would a shut down occur?

EM: Once a year.

AS: Oh, so purposefully?

EM: Yeah, for preventive maintenance and that sort of thing and any repairs that need to be made.

AS: Were there ever instances where there was an unplanned shut down?

EM: Yes but they typically would be in a single area because of a problem exclusive to that area and the rest of the mill would continue running. I don’t believe we’ve had any at the treatment plant but again the treatment plant we’re a little unique in the fact we tend to have duplicates of equipment especially for that purpose.

AS: So the treatment plant was a part of the mill?

EM: Yes, it’s actually across the street from the rest of the mill. It’s piped underground, a lot of processed waters are piped underground, over and then they were processed through and then they were piped back to the discharge to the river. It is a part of the mill but it’s kind of across the street.

AS: So it’s not really connected to the main building?

EM: Right.

AS: Other than by the pipes.

EM: You got it.

AS: Ok. So did you work right until the mill closed down a few months ago?

EM: Yes, I think they said May 15th was like the official day that we were not employed there anymore. I think the last day I actually worked was the 9th; unfortunately I had a friend die on the 6th and I found out about it on the 9th so I probably would have worked later had that not have happened.

AS: I’m so sorry.

EM: Thank you.

AS: Can you tell me a little bit about the shut down process, how that sort of built up towards the end and …?

EM: There were a lot of rumors from even the fall before, we were hearing a lot of rumors.

AS: Really.

EM: So it was one of those things and then we kind of had heard, when it got really close to when they announced it. We were reading stuff in trade journals. We were like we’ve been hearing a lot of rumors but why are we reading it in a trade journal about if this mill shuts down or that it’s likely or something, you know it’s some speculation so pretty much by the time they announced it, I think most people were relieved just because they knew what was going to happen. It was the not knowing was very hard on a lot of people. [End Track 12, Begin Track 13]

AS: Were you yourself making plans just in case?

EM: I actually started interviewing for jobs before they announced that they were shutting down.

AS: You did.

EM: Yes.

AS: And when did they announce exactly?

EM: They announced I believe it was March 15th or 16th.

AS: That sounds right.

EM: Mid-March.

AS: Did they offer any type of education or retraining programs or benefits for those laid off?

EM: There is some stuff available. To be honest I was hoping, it sounds kind of weird because I have a degree in chemical engineering but I was hoping to take advantage of the training and I’m trying to apply for that and I still don’t know if I am eligible for it.

AS: Really how come?

EM: It’s a very slow process.

AS: Why wouldn’t you be eligible?

EM: Well the mill is eligible but Georgia-Pacific applied for the mill and they said that we had lost our jobs due to foreign competition and the federal government did approve our, I don’t know if I get the name of it right, I think it was the trade readjustment act but the trade act was pretty much what it was and there was a couple different sections of that so we are eligible for assistance with benefits. You have to apply for the retraining and apparently there’s some question, I think mainly due to my degree as to whether I’m eligible for that or not.

AS: What type of retraining were you hoping for?

EM: I was hoping to go to school for nursing.

AS: Really.

EM: Yes.

AS: Good for you.

EM: There’s a lot of opportunities there and it pretty much can be done anywhere and I have a strong interest in it so

AS: Great.

EM: That’s something I just would love to do. To be honest I plan to do that regardless of whether I get the assistance or not but it sure would help out a lot if I had that, the assistance so, especially because I mean I own this house and it’s not the kind of house a college student would have. So it’s a pretty big adjustment you know in the salary. I have found another job but it does not pay near what I made at the mill.

AS: What are you doing now?

EM: I actually start on Monday and I’ll be working for Eastern Maine Healthcare in their medical records department.

AS: Oh great.

EM: Yeah so and they actually will help with college after a year so that was kind of the carrot for me but it pays about a third of what I made at the mill.

AS: Wow.

EM: I did have a lot of opportunities to make jobs that probably paid more if I was willing to leave the state. My families here and my fiancés families here, we discussed it and we really prefer to stay here in spite of the lower incomes.

AS: So do you have any opinions about why Georgia-Pacific closed down?

EM: I think that this mill had a lot of challenges being in the Northeast. You know to transport the product it gets very expensive; there’s a lot of tools and just distance wise, we’re a little isolated and also we have higher energy costs than the southern mills so I think those were two of the biggest impacts.

AS: And do you believe when they say it had a lot to do with foreign competition as well?

EM: I do actually. It kind of depends on how you look at it because a lot of it was internal competition because they’re saying that the southern mills can make the product cheaper than us but because of the foreign competition there’s not as much of a need in the US to produce as many tons as we previously had. So it is, I guess depending on your interpretation of it but I think it is certainly both you know. We have a hard time competing with the southern mills but you know there was the fact that foreign competition is, you know they can make the product a lot cheaper than we can so you know does it make sense as a business to you know continue operating all of your facilities here. You know really that’s kind of an economic, I’m certainly not an economist but

AS: Well do you have any sense of what Maine’s pulp and paper industry is facing? It’s kind of a big open ended question.

EM: Yes.

AS: I mean would you advise people, college students going through the chemical engineering or the pulp and paper programs to stick around here?

EM: I would tell people if they really wanted to get into the pulp and paper field that they should plan on, they should count on leaving the state of Maine and if they want to stay here and they do get to stay here, that’s great but they shouldn’t bank on it. Especially you’ve got a lot of talented people who really want to stay here, there’s a lot of competition for those jobs in the state of Maine right now because of all the lay-offs that we’ve had recently. [End Track 13, Begin Track 14]

EM: And you know we do have some state environmental rules that other states don’t have. I don’t think that’s ever a deciding factor but that certainly doesn’t help and doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do either. You know, maybe it’s the right thing to do and everybody should be doing it if it’s the right thing for the environment, but it can make it more challenging.

AS: Can you talk a little bit about what some of those are?

EM: There’s a TRS rule, chapter 124 in the Maine air regulations that other mills are not subject to. I don’t believe that it’s a significant cost and I think, I’m not familiar with other states regulations. Some mills depending on what they have for equipment by meeting federal rules, they may already be meeting or just based on their own practices, they may already be meeting the rule; but that was one that it was going to require some significant capital investment here.

AS: Now when you say TRS rule, what do you mean by that?

EM: Total reduced sulfur.

AS: Oh ok.

EM: Those are your, there’s four total reduced sulfur compounds. You have your hydrogen sulfide, diethyl disulfide, methyl mercaptan, and there’s a third one; I’m not coming up with on the top of my head but there’s three of them. They are your stinkiest; that’s what you smell when you smell the craft mill.

AS: So Maine has stricter rules about that than other states do?

EM: We have a rule that is stricter. Again, I’m not familiar with what every other state has for regulations but it’s stricter than the federal rules.

AS: That’s interesting.

EM: That is yes, but you know it’s designed to really get after the odor issues that you have in mill towns. I don’t think it’s a bad rule. I really don’t want to make it sound like it’s a bad rule but there are some things out there that Maine does that is above and beyond you know and that might be better for tourism and you know there’s a bunch of different aspects to it and just because it’s a rule that’s there and it costs company’s money to comply with, doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.

AS: Right.

EM: But there are some things that probably if you’re looking, if you’re a company, you’re looking to invest, it doesn’t help; but on the other hand too probably isn’t all that significant maybe compared to you know, you do have high energy and transportation costs; so if you can get the wood you’re looking for in the southern US why would you want to transfer your really good hard wood up here. Southern states tend to have good soft wood.

AS: Have you heard anything about the future of the Old Town mill?

EM: I’ve heard a lot of rumors that someone’s going to buy it and they’re going to restart but nothing, I guess I’d say any legitimate that I’ve heard.

AS: So if it did reopen would you look to get your position back?

EM: That’s a tough question. I guess I probably wouldn’t know until I was put in that position if I were asked to return. I think it would be real hard at first because a lot of people have moved on and would not be coming back.

AS: Really.

EM: So I think the mill would be a mess at first and it would be very difficult, very challenging at first to get that mill up and running just based on the experience we’ve lost and stuff like that because they would need to bring in new people at this point that have never worked in that mill before. It would be very difficult to have that many new people training all at once and try to get restarted; so that would be a discouraging part that you know, it would be a rough ride for quite awhile. Actually I was just telling my fiancé today, I actually stayed up too late last night and had to get up this morning and I’ve been tired all day. I was just telling him I’m so tired, I feel like crap. I’m just walking around and I feel crappy. Since the mill shut down, I haven’t started a new job yet so I’ve been pretty relaxed you know I have plenty of time, get plenty of sleep and all that, not over worked or too over stressed but I was telling him you know I’m like when I worked at the mill this is what I felt like every day and I don’t know how I ever did it.

AS: Wow.

EM: Yeah, I’d work really, you know we worked really long hours. Most of us worked really long hours and you come home and it’s the end of the day and you’ve got stuff you need, and I don’t even know how people with families ever did it. So you know, I don’t have any little ones to take care of and I know that they require a lot of energy and all that but you know you come home and it’s just like oh, I’ve got to [End Track 14, Begin Track 15]

EM: find some time to get to the bank and of course they’re closed by the time you get out of work and they’re closed when you go to work so hopefully you can zip over there during lunch or whatever but oh it always seemed like such a challenge. You get home and you’re too tired to cook so you probably order out you know but I was just tired all the time so I stayed up late trying to get stuff done and then you still have to get up to go to work in the morning. It would be worse I think if they were to restart going back and trying, at first, initially anyway. If someone bought them that was willing to put in some good capital investment I think there’s a lot of projects; certainly I think every engineer had projects lined up that were on their wish list that would make everybody’s life easier and make the mill run more efficiently but capital investments are sometimes harder to come by. Actually for the year, that’s one of the things that kind of we knew, we kind of felt we saw something coming, we didn’t get any capital investment for 2006.

AS: Oh really.

EM: Yes, and that’s extremely unusual because you have capital investment that’s needed for just you know maybe you have a piece of equipment that has reached the end of its useful life and it needs to be replaced; that’s a capital project so it was extremely unusual that we got absolutely zero dollars for capital for 2006. That was one of the big warning, big red flags.

AS: Do you still keep in touch with a lot of your co-workers from Georgia-Pacific?

EM: A couple, there was a few of us that used to bike after work, one night a week so I keep in touch with those two and my friend Amy as well. We’re really close friends but we keep in touch as well.

AS: Do you have a sense of how most folks are doing since the lay-offs?

EM: I think, I wouldn’t say most people but I think people are moving on. Some people are moving on, some people are waiting it out to see what happens.

AS: Do you receive unemployment or any kind of benefits, health benefits?

EM: I have been collecting unemployment. I did get a severance, a small severance package. I hadn’t been there a whole long time so it wasn’t, it didn’t get me too far but I have been collecting unemployment benefits so hopefully I won’t need to anymore. I suppose to start work on Monday so

AS: Congratulations and good luck. I think I’ve asked just about everything. I guess I’ll end with the big question here, do you feel that there was something different about being a woman in a paper mill and if so, what was that?

EM: I wouldn’t say there was really anything different about it but kind of like I had touched on before like I never really thought, I don’t really put myself in those boundaries that I can’t do stuff because I’m a woman and it may be different for other women in the industry and you know like I said there’s always some people that want to you know be dismissive of your ideas or they don’t want to do that and to be honest you never really get inside somebody’s head, you don’t know; it may be they just don’t like the way I talk or the way I approach problems. It could be anything but you know I don’t think, I don’t really believe that one person can hold you back if there’s something that you really want to do so and obviously not everybody feels that way; like I said I couldn’t say for sure that anybody ever did for that specific reason. I don’t know, I don’t think it’s too different to be honest. I think, I don’t know, not for me anyway. I mean you show up and you do your job and I think we had a really good group of professional women in that mill. And then on the other hand too, maybe you have some women that are unprofessional but you have that in everybody so it’s not necessarily and unfortunately sometimes when you do have that with women it kind of gives everybody a bad name. I don’t know how to say that. I did not experience that in the mill, everybody there was very professional. In the national guard, I have noticed, again it’s very male dominated and I have noticed one or two unprofessional women really give the rest of us a harder time of it, trying to prove ourselves.

AS: Was there anything else that you want to add that I haven’t asked you?

EM: I don’t think so.

AS: Ok. Well thank you very much for talking with me.

EM: Thanks.

Last updated: