The Escape Artist

Sam opened the garage door today. She found a garage-door opener in DH's nightstand, stepped on the right button and voila - up went the door and she was sure she was on her way to freedom. Andy ratted her out and - busted. Sorry Sam.In thinking about sexual harassment in the workplace, I would often not "get" what some men were saying. It wasn't always too hard because I was hopelessly naive for so long. The following illustrates my point.

Once a week we had pizza night at the firm I worked for. Around 5-6:00pm we would gather at the office for pizza and learn about new products, have different mutual-fund wholesalers tout their funds, get info on different tax shelters and new offerings. The meetings often lasted until 10:00pm and that was a very, very long day as most of us were at our desks around 6:30-7:00am.

This particular evening ran very late and it was almost 11:00pm when the most tired bunch of brokers you've ever seen headed for the elevators and home. Someone pushed a button that summoned the elevator. No one spoke. When the elevator arrived, we quietly shuffled in - still not speaking. We were exhausted. I was one of only two women brokers. Then one of the men said, "I'm so tired. When I get home all I'm going to do is play with my monkey."

Now, our local paper had been running a series of articles about how many people were illegally importing exotic animals and too late discovering they were difficult to housebreak and also dangerous. Most of the exotic animals were monkeys. So when this fellow said he was going to play with his monkey, I thought he meant a monkey. In all innocence I said, "Oh, you have a monkey?" When laughter broke out, someone said, "That must be Sandy!" It was. I knew I'd said something wrong but didn't know what until years later. I lot of my naivete I didn't have to fake. I also think I read too much.