Word: thelma
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Thelma Massey, for instance, one of the main checkers in Lowell House, has been at Harvard for 13 years and says she hasn't regretted a day of it. Born and raised in this area, Thelma had been a cook her entire life. She recalls all too well the days she spent behind a door in a roadside cafe marked "employees only," hovering over a hot stove, bustling to prepare food for impatient customers. "When you're cooking you have someone rush in who wants a steak in maybe ten minutes, and the most you can finish...
...workers summer jobs in other departments. Usually, they work as custodians for the dormitories and Houses occupied by summer school students, since most of the dorm-crew students on financial aid aren't around. Those dining hall workers who don't get jobs receive unemployment insurance--a fact neither Thelma, Pat nor John likes to admit...
These workers say that the attitude of the students' goes far to make the jobs pleasant. "There's not one student I wouldn't want living in this House," Thelma says. "These kids are so appreciative. Just the other day. I fixed the milk machine for a boy, I thought he had gone and sat down, when he suddenly came up and thanked me." Pat agrees. "There's more closeness in this House than in the other Houses--it's like one big happy family." She disappears into the kitchen and returns a moment later with a plain pink card...
...impression on these Lowell kitchen worker. It is--to them--a sign that Harvard does not cater only to the rich, and they do not see Harvard strictly as an elite institution open only to the offspring of the wealthy. "I think anybody who works hard can get in," Thelma says. "I think it's fair in that respect. I know many kids who have to work everyday and go to classes, too, and that's not easy." Pat adds, "Even the rich kids don't make a big show about it. And some of their parents make them work...
...subject of strikes seems to be taboo among the kitchen workers--at least when outsiders are within earshot. Thelma shies away from discussing a skirmish between kitchen employees and the University a few years ago, and she quickly asserts that the incident was just a little misunderstanding that had been all straightened out. On the other hand, John says, "we can't strike. It's not in the contract. We had a big argument about that." Most kitchen workers decline to talk about the possibility of a kitchen workers' strike similar to the one at Yale last fall. Union issues...