Teresa...Hiring My Way

“Teresa”…(Hiring My Way)

November 9, 2009 in Personal Leave a reply

“Every person is a new door to a different world”

Teresa…Hiring My Way

By Maya
After my arrival to US I went through some temporary “employments” such as babysitting while in a meantime I’ve been perfecting my English. Finally, after few months of searching I have found job with clothing company in NYC as a seasonal help.
However, in 2 weeks time I’ve been offered permanent contract and became head of inventory control.

Well, as usually (my high energy always win) with a lightning speed I boldly pointed out disorganized office matters and offered to fix it, drawing on my previous experiences from positions I held back in my country. So besides still keeping inventory control under my thumb, I became office manager, with other responsibilities as handling shipments from China, (company was one of the first dealing with China) delegating daily tasks to others, plus I became vice-president’s “right hand”.

My direct boss, vice president N. (his real initial) was middle aged, rather overweight man, with good heart though, who gave me lot of authority and listened to my every suggestion because my improvements worked really well. (Thanks God!) We’ve also became very good friends. During season we’ve worked often overtime and he knew he could rely on me. So all went very well then, company was growing, and so were my duties and N. mentioned to me few times that I myself could use some assistant.

And now, when I came across this photo, it brought my memories of that time back to me. Photo is showing Teresa, my assistant, and myself in my office.

I always attracted people on my way through life, whom I did help somehow and she was one of them…
So…. one evening I worked with my boss taking care of some faxes for China. There was a knocking on our locked door and I went to check who was visiting. There was a man, looking rather haggard, acting desperate and speaking very broken English. He said that he is new emigrant from Poland and he is desperately looking for some work for his wife. Anything would be OK, sweeping floors, anything. He had already found something for himself and was about to start his work, but with very low pay and they had 2 children. I told him to bring his wife Teresa next day at 8am.

N. asked me: “Who was it?” I said: “N., I just hired my new assistant.” N: “What?”
I: “But N., you constantly nudge me I should get one.” N: “Well yes, but I thought you would conduct some interviews.” I: “Yes, she will be here tomorrow morning.
And by the way, she doesn’t speak any English…yet… N: “What? “ I: “Don’t worry, dear, I speak Polish.”
So this is how Teresa got her job as my “right hand” and became devoted to me and also became my good friend. I took care that regardless of her lack of English she was respected as my assistant. You can see on the picture how she is posing herself with me, that small stuffed animal on corner of my desk is from her. She was always trying to bring me coffee. I had to translate for her in front of N who said: “Maya never asks anyone to bring her coffee from our kitchen, so you do it.”
I said:” N. I bring it myself because I also need some movement, I have to sit whole day. Anyway, agreement was that T. would take care of all filling (which was job plenty enough) and be my assistant in all I would need. Other bosses were informed that if they need something from T. they would simply tell me. Otherwise nobody else had right to her. She turned out to be an excellent worker, all was always in order, she was efficient, accomplished. N. liked to say: “ You did train her well.” But I told him that what I did was just to show her how. If it were not in person already, it would never bring forth what wasn’t there. I was very satisfied with her. I discovered that she was very talented swimmer and won several medals in competition for Poland. I guessed she was a swimmer, having strong, wide shoulders and she was very pleased. She always brought some sandwiches and chocolates for me, which I tried to forbid, but with no success. We had a lot of work but also great times together.
She eventually returned with her family back to Poland.
So this is one small episode from the beginnings of my life in US and as I mentioned, the picture somehow caused me to…reminiscence…
Thank you for reading…
Maya