Work History - Jobs In Boston, 1975-1979

Temp Jobs

After that Summer in DC I moved back up to Somerville MA in the Fall of 1975, where I and my friends (several of whom were also college drop-outs) had rented a house and were going to pursue a rock and roll lifestyle.  We were a band and a crew of roadies, and I was going to write lyrics for the songs they would create.  It was a good try, but eventually petered out and most of us went back to college.  In the meantime I had to get a day job, as did most of the others.

I hit the pavement and went to most of the bookstores around Harvard Square, cold-calling in person for a job and getting no nibbles.  I had a high school diploma and experience in retail and shipping/receiving.  I also liked books, but somehow that wasn't enough.  I tried other kinds of businesses too, including one TV repair place near us in Somerville where the owner/proprietor told me that he'd love to hire someone as willing to work as I was, but he had to employ his no-good son instead.

Finally I stumbled on a temp agency in Boston, that brokered work for a stable of employees at businesses around Boston that needed short-time help.  They sent me on several jobs, which usually lasted a couple of weeks, and the agency was the steady source of paychecks, usually at minimum wage (which by then was around $2.10 an hour) but once in a while for a bit more.  This worked out for a while, changing jobs quickly kept things interesting.  For all of these I’d take the MBTA bus/subway into Boston, and I usually brought my lunch, or just skipped it.  Things I remember doing were:

• General office work for a small company in Roxbury (near Eggleston Square) that was drowning in paperwork.  The boss was a bit of a jerk, but the others in the office liked me.  I would get a piece of fruit or vegetable from a street vendor and hang out at a bar for lunch, where I was the only white person and so an interesting novelty to the old guys.

• A typing job at a small company that really needed a better typist than me; it was clear after a few days that I was the wrong person for them.

• A job with a real estate management company in the Orient Heights section of East Boston that needed to rapidly clean out apartments for re-leasing.

• Manning a cash register at the BC bookstore at the beginning of a term.  In retrospect, I can't believe they treated me so badly ... no breaks and they wanted me to ring that register all day.  The lines of concerned students wound around the store and all transactions were cash, no credit cards then.

• Doing clerical stuff for the Boston School Committee on D Street in South Boston.  This was the height of the "bussing" era, an attempt to un-segregate Boston schools, and I was in some ways on the front lines, though in an obscure office.  I (unwittingly) was one of the nameless hoards practicing institutional racism.  We were supposed to process forms submitted by parents throughout Boston, some of whom did not speak English and/or did not want to reveal their race but had "filled out" the form anyway.  We were supposed to maintain a ledger of how many people of what race attended what Boston school.  The bosses were frustrated that we did not go quicker.  I remember asking one what I was supposed to do when a parent had not answered the "What race are you?" question.  His answer, "Look at this one, it's a guy named McDonald who lives in Brighton ... he's white!  Look at this one, it's a guy named Jose something who lives in Roxbury ... he's Hispanic!"  Didn't last there long.

• Finally got a job that was working out well at Blue Cross Blue Shield, located at 100 Summer Street in downtown Boston.  I was a Medical Claims Examiner and I lasted there a few months.  This was another case of working in the background for an institution that was not serving people as well as it should have.  We'd get hand-filled-out claim forms from doctors whose patients had insurance policies with BCBS, and we were supposed to mark these up with codes for the medical procedures they were claiming.  Claims like "Office Visit" were no problem, but the claim forms were often were more complicated than that.  We had to look up the procedures in large books to find out what code to mark them as, and several difficulties in doing this were: doctors do not write well, doctors use different terms, we were not medical students and did not understand the procedures, and we often got stuck.  I didn't want to let myself think of the poor people on the other side of the equation who found out eventually that BCBS had decided to pay for or not to pay for their procedure, which could have been life threatening!  I did ok and they eventually wanted to hire me away from the temp agency and give me a permanent job, but I didn't want it.  Instead...

Cab Driving for Town Taxi and Boston Cab

I started driving cab in January 1976 and quit in March 1979.  As I say, most of us were looking for jobs.  One friend in our rented house in West Somerville had driven cab in New York City for a while, and so he tried it in Boston.  He came back with rave reports, and eventually most of us in the house were jumping into our friend's car at 5:30AM and car-pooling from Somerville into Boston to drive rich people to work and the airport.

I started with Town Taxi on Van Ness Street, which would hire anyone at the time.  You have to get a hackney license to drive cab in Boston, but at that point there was no test to pass.  You just had to apply to the Police Department for a license and you'd get one if you weren’t a felon … though this was the 70s of course and so I’m sure the criteria varied.  Town paid an hourly wage and you'd have to hand over every cent that showed on the cab's meter at the end of the day.  You also got to keep your tips.

Soon we all heard that Boston Cab, then located on Kilmarnock Street in Boston, was a better deal.  There we young guys were all quasi-independent operators; we were gig employees long before that term became common.  The company was responsible for maintenance of the cab and its meter, its medallion (license with the City of Boston), and gas.  We drivers would pay a certain amount at the end of the day for the use of the cab (1970s model Checkers), plus a fee based on the number of miles we'd driven it.  Whatever income we got from the use of the cab for the day was ours.  I soon realized that they had a great radio network and arrangements with most of the hospitals in town.  A good percentage of my income was off the meter, transporting packages between businesses downtown (this was before bicycle couriers) and doing errands for the hospitals, like picking up eyes from the airport and rushing them out to the operating rooms.

I did well there and was soon an accepted face around the garage.  I liked the owner, the chief dispatcher, and the guys doing the telephone and radio.  There were some episodes where tempers got out of hand (the old guys got the best cabs).  But there was a lot of camaraderie too, especially since many of my existing friends were also driving, and I made a lot of new friends quickly.  A friend I met driving cab introduced me to the woman I married.  We were all young and looking for adventures, and being in the beating heart of the city was one.

I barely ate anything back then in an attempt to save money, and rarely had lunch.  But breakfast quickly became an institution.  There was a little grill place on Queensberry Street right around the corner from the garage that would open at 6:00, and my friend Phil and I were usually the first two people there.  Sometimes we had to wait for the guy (whose name I forget) to open up.  He was a wizard with breakfast.  We’d park our cabs on the 39 taxi stand and go in there and get scrambled eggs and meat, I usually got bacon and Phil got sausage, coffee, juice, toast, milk, and home fries to die for, for a little over a buck.  We’d leave him good tips, because this was an item of faith.  Both Phil and I had learned from experience that if we started the day this way, then we would have good days ourselves and earn good tips.  Some of our friends thought that we were crazy, but whenever they tried it they agreed that a) it was a great breakfast and a mellow way to start the day and b) they often did better for the rest of the day.

And cab driving (for a time) fulfilled my requirement of doing something I found interesting.  At its best it was like playing a huge board game in multiple dimensions.  I had a map of the city in my mind and I had to figure instantly the best route when I picked up a passenger and/or a package and was told a random destination.  When I dropped off I had to know where I was going to go next, and I had to listen to the radio the whole time to jump on good package jobs or fares.  You want to be positioned to drive people between residential areas and downtown in the morning, and then get good hospital work in the afternoon.

In Spring 1976, the year I'd given myself to decide about college was up.  And I realized that I did not want to spend the rest of my work life as just a warm body, I needed to have skills I could depend on.  So I went back to Tufts starting that Fall.  My father and mother (who were putting four kids through expensive schools) told me they could pay my tuition at Tufts, but that I'd have to cover everything else.  So I kept driving cab and supported myself while going to college.  I had to pay for books, a place to live, and every once in a while something to eat.

And actually, driving cab was a great job while going to school.  I could set my own schedule and could drive up to Medford to attend class and/or take exams even on days I was working.  Though going to college full time, I still got in about 40 hours a week, which sometimes included the less lucrative weekend days.  I kept driving for almost a year even after graduating with an English major.  I was averaging about $100/day, which was better money than an entry-level English major job.  But eventually I realized that it was time to move on from cab driving.  I was getting angry more and more often at traffic, spoiled people, jerks, etc.  Getting robbed twice (once at knifepoint in the aftermath of the Blizzard of ’78 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978)) sure made me think, and less and less was it a "huge board game" for me.  I wanted to make a steady income and have a more secure life.  I guess I was growing up!

I decided that I wanted to continue studying art history and maybe pursue an MA, and so decided to get a job at a college and get tuition remission.  I interviewed for jobs at BU and Harvard, but eventually got one right back at Tufts, in the library.  The bosses at Boston Cab were sorry to see me go, but not surprised at my decision to leave.