What was your first boss like?

The summer after graduating from high school, I was hired at Tau Laboratory. The job required a forty hour week and becoming part of a team. Since this was my first experience having to be accountable, I needed a fair amount of training on every level. My boss, Ritchie Whalen, was a patient sort of man and took me under his wing. The job itself was not hard, but it was hard getting to work on time and then being part of a team that depended on you being at your station. It was repetitive work. We were sterilizing microscope slides for the science department. It was a sort of assembly line that meant you had to be at your station to keep the flow going. It quickly became boring and because of that friendships developed to keep us sane. For me this meant distraction and forgetting to set my timers. Ritchie would patiently remind me to focus and socialize on our breaks. How many times he did this, I don’t remember, but often enough that I remember details about his office.  He had memorabilia from New York City on his shelves. He was from New York and went home on the weekends. While he was reminding me to focus on setting my timers, I was more interested in where he lived in the city. I had a secret dream of going to F.I.T. in New York. Visits to the city as a young girl were exciting, but also scary and overwhelming. Over time he came to know this about me.

On our breaks I was usually working on an embroidery or hemming something I had sewn. After being with the company for six months, I applied for a position in the Science Department. I was not qualified, but boredom helped me to take a chance. Ritchie kindly told me I was not qualified and that perhaps lab work was not a good fit. And then he did something I have never forgotten. He handed me pamphlets on F.I.T. . While I did not go there, it was the first time I felt someone believe my dream was possible. Years later when I did go to Apparel Design school, I thought of Ritchie Whalen. He was right, I never would have lasted working in a lab.