When my daughter was eight months old, I took a job as a home typist for a woman who had started her own secretarial service business. I transcribed reports for a firm that investigated workers compensation claims. I only remember a couple of the tapes. One was about a man who had bragged to co-workers that he had an immigrant woman at his home, and she was his sex slave.
There was another tape about a man who prided himself on being frugal. He saved on laundry bills by wearing the same pair of socks at least twice a week by turning the socks inside out on the second day. There was no other article of clothing mentioned. I guess these tapes were the first inkling I had that some people were different from me. The investigator, as he got toward the end of the tape, would say “Wouldn’t you like to know what I found out next? Turn the tape over.”
The job didn’t last long because the woman was going through a divorce and her husband took his cane and destroyed all her typewriters and transcription equipment. I was paid two cents per line of typing.
June 30, 1996