Hard Hat

By C Atkinson

Loretta "Lolly" Novak has a great job as a project manager for a construction company in San Francisco. She likes to work hard and play hard. But when she begins to experience her life in a male-dominated world, Lolly realizes that the hat she chose to wear is harder than she ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645368229

C Atkinson

Dr Colin Atkinson is a leading consultant to the textile industry in issues affecting textured yarns with over 30 years' experience. He is a former Managing Director of Intex Yarns Limited and Technical Director of Rieter-Scragg Limited, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of yarn texturing machinery.

Book preview

Twenty-Nine

About The Author

C. Atkinson derived her pen name from her given name, Charlene; her nickname, Cricket; and her maiden name, Chopnak. Born and raised in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA, she attended the University of Pittsburgh and received a degree in Civil Engineering. She was recruited out of college to work at a major construction company in San Francisco. She currently lives in Penngrove, CA, with her husband, Kerry, and cat, Mango.

About The Book

Loretta Lolly Novak has a great job as a project manager for a construction company in San Francisco. She likes to work hard and play hard. But when she begins to experience her life in a male-dominated world, Lolly realizes that the hat she chose to wear is harder than she ever imagined.

Dedication

To my mom and dad, who encouraged me to follow my dreams, and to my husband, Kerry, for making all my dreams come true.

Copyright Information ©

C. Atkinson (2019)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Atkinson, C.

Hard Hat

ISBN 9781643785837 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781643785844 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645368229 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912398

The main category of the book — FICTION / Contemporary Women

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 28th Floor

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Chapter One

As the plastic door slams behind me, I turn around, slide the latch on the closed door, and sit down on the cold toilet seat in the bright blue Port-o-John. Mouth breathe. At that moment, I realize the construction industry has many perks, but luxury bathroom facilities are not one of them. Running water isn’t either.

Mouth breathe. I look around and notice some new graffiti on the left wall. I read, ‘TOILET ROOM TENNIS. SEE OTHER SIDE.’ I turn my head to the right, and read, ‘SEE OTHER SIDE.’ My head turns back to the left, and I read, ‘TOILET ROOM TENNIS, SEE OTHER SIDE.’ My head shakes as I grin. I wonder who was playing toilet room tennis in here. This is MY bathroom, or blue room, as I so affectionately call it.

I remember my first day on this job-site. I got a full tour of the twin doublewide trailer office complex. Each and every wall was clad with simulated wood paneling, finished in a light walnut color. The vinyl flooring was dull but full green. The mini-blinds were gray beige. The whole office had this sort of green bean casserole motif. In fact, the entire place reeked of potluck. I was paraded through the conference room, the coffee station, the office supply closet, and my future office. It was very impressive. But I will never forget how special I felt when we arrived at Mike’s desk. Mike is the superintendent on the construction project. Since a superintendent’s job on a construction site is to manage the work in the field, the furniture in this part of the trailer has to accommodate that job. Besides Mike’s desk, there’s a twenty-foot-long shelf table, to keep the construction drawings, and only one chair. Mike’s chair. It was clear that anyone else that spent time in here was welcome if you were willing to stand. This was where all the real construction stuff came down, where all the tough guys talked tough. What was said was said standing up so the orders could make it to the field and get built.

I walked into Mike’s side of the house. Hi. Loretta Novak, I said as I reached my hand towards him, just to make sure he remembered my name. We met twice before, so you never know. I don’t really know him, so I don’t know if he remembers me, my name, or why I’m on site, for that matter.

Mike got up from his chair and extended his hand to mine. I know your name. I might be old, but I’m not senile, Mike declared as I immediately started to try and figure out how old he was and equate that age to senility. Welcome. We shook hands. Mike had a firm, dirty handshake. I wanted to wash my hands immediately. But he looked me straight in the eyes with his baby blues, sat back down in his chair, at his desk, and opened his desk drawer. I was standing. He reached in and grabbed a key, with a bright yellow floatable keyring. He turned his chair as he shut the desk drawer, looked up to me, and said, Loretta, this is the key to the ladies’ room. You don’t have to use the same toilet as the rest of the guys.

Well now, how ‘bout that. Separate men AND ladies’ bathrooms! What a modern concept. It’s 1994, for Christ’s sake. The construction business is really zooming into the future, and I’m glad I’m strapped in for the ride.

Mike added, And if you drop the key in by mistake, we equipped it with this here floatable device, so you can retrieve it. I’m thinking not.

Two days later, when I make my morning trek to my blue room, I go to open the padlock with MY key, but the lock wasn’t there. I think, Oh my God. Someone stole the lock off of my blue room! I look at the front of the plastic structure and staring me right in the face, in bright red letters, are the words OCCUPIED. There they are, right there on the front of the door. Did I mention it is morning? Details are not my strong suit in the morning. I stand there, in the mist of the morning fog, like I am at the county fair or a rock festival, waiting in line to pee, along with the rest of the general public. Only then, it starts to occur to me. WAIT A MINUTE! I’m the only woman on this job-site and my blue room shouldn’t be… At that very moment, the latch slams open and the door swung wildly toward me. I jump back a little as Mike steps down out of his plastic-clad throne. Ahh, good morning, he said, avoiding eye contact as he v-lines straight for the trailer, his hands still rustling with something around his crotch. I suddenly realize the only time any of the guys use my blue room is when they have to sit down.

I bounce out of my blue room, with the cheap, hollow bang of a plastic door behind me. As my feet hit the ground, my left foot lands right into a puddle of water. Fuck. Mud splashes all over my work boots. Good thing I have my high heels to wear to my meeting at 4:45 with one of San Francisco’s oldest landlords, Cohen, Tanner, and Swimmer. This meeting is worthy of high heels. CTS is a ‘high heel’ kind of client. Professional, sophisticated, successful. And they recently awarded Henderson and Steinberg (H&S), my employer, a contract to build out seven floors in an existing building in San Francisco. H&S is the oldest general contractor in San Francisco. There is one thing about being a builder in earthquake territory, building is good business, rebuilding is great business. H&S built most of the real estate currently owned by CTS in San Francisco before the big one hit in 1906 and rebuilt it afterwards.

I start to think about the meeting with CTS this afternoon, and the similarities between H&S and CTS. Both companies have been around for well over one hundred years, have offices in the financial district, and are family-owned. Now, H&S is employee-owned, but why do I think the family still owns most of the company? The big difference between the two is that H&S is a construction company, and CTS is a development company. I don’t know why, but deep down inside, I wish I worked for CTS. As I start to plan the rest of my day, the goal is to leave here by 4:00 p.m., enough time to change into my high heels when I get to the city.

I used to like being alone at the job-site. It’s quiet, my blue room is mine alone, and I can get a lot of work done. On a normal day, I get here at 8:30 a.m. and stay until 5:00 p.m. Everyone else gets here at 6:00 a.m. Or, at least, that’s the time I’m told everyone else gets here. I wouldn’t know, because I’m surely to God not here at that time. Must not be the hours that attracted me to the construction business either. I am not a morning person. Thirty minutes is my minimum time awake before doing normal morning things like showering and shaving. And I have to have coffee. Good coffee. The village project is about a twenty-minute drive down the east shore freeway from my triplex. When I arrive at 8:30 a.m., everyone else is usually on site and well into their workday routine. And it is a routine. Fifteen-minute morning break at 9:30 a.m. Thirty-minute lunch is at 11:30 a.m. sharp. Afternoon break at 1:15 and every day, just like clockwork, at 2:30 p.m., I can almost hear everyone on site scream ‘Yabba Dabba Doo’ as they slide down the spine of their construction equipment and head to their other lives for the rest of the day. They are so excited to be done with work. They love going home each night. The funny part of it is that they are just as excited about getting here the next morning. So I’m told, since I’m not here to witness their excitement at 6:00 a.m. These guys want to come to work. They love working. They love what they do.

H&S is required to provide off-hour security for the entire construction site and we have a ‘hire local’ clause in our contract, so we hired the only local ‘rent a cop’ firm in town, EZ Security. With a name like that, granted, my expectations were quite low. Every day at 2:45 p.m., the guard comes into the trailer, grabs the radio, and makes his rounds on the site to make sure nothing ‘suspicious’ is happening. The site is not in a bad part of town, but it is close enough to bad parts of town, that the thought of a guard on site with me until 5:00 p.m. is comforting. Every day, after 3:00 p.m., it’s just me and, well, I never can remember his name.

Today, the guard drops his backpack in the trailer, grabs his radio, does his rounds, and parks in the usual spot in the lot. I have to leave at 3:45 to get to my meeting on time. At 3:15, out of the window of my lovely doublewide office trailer, I notice two sedans pull into the mud-puddled parking lot and park next to the guard’s charcoal-primed pick up with the Oakland Raiders bumper sticker. I can’t tell who or how many people are in the cars. No one actually gets out of the cars at first, so I really didn’t know what was going on. I just sit and watch from my office. Eventually, I can see the electric windows roll down, small tethered woofers and tweeters rise up onto the car roofs, and hear a bass sound start to pulse. It is a bass so low and loud that my internal organs seem to pulsate with every beat. Eventually, one by one, guys exit the vehicles and join the party, drinking brown paper bag specials as the sunset over the bay.

I think, Fuck, now what do I do? It’s 3:45. I’m alone inside the trailer. They must realize I’m still here. My Miata is parked ten feet away. I have no idea what their game plan is. I’m scared shitless. My mind is racing. I keep watching and thinking. OK, Plan A. I’m the boss and I should do something boss-like. I should go out there and say ‘what in the hell do you think you are doing here? This is a place of business and I’m the boss. Leave, now.’ Yeah, right. And every day, from here on out, when I’m here alone after 3:00 p.m., I can be afraid of the security guard that is employed here to make me feel secure, because I’m the boss. Or Plan B. Call Raj, the EZ security owner, to break this up. They are his employees anyway, not mine. It would only take his employees 30 seconds to figure out how they got busted. And every day, from here on out, when I’m here alone after 3:00 p.m., I can be afraid of the security guard that is employed here to make me feel secure, because I’m a rat.

Hi, Raj, this is Loretta at the village job-site. Your guard invited some friends over for a party on the property. I’m here alone and I’m a little nervous.

I’ll be right over.

In no less than ten minutes, Raj’s Mercedes comes around the corner into the job-site parking lot. There must be more money in the Rent a Cop business than I thought. When the partygoers catch sight of his car, the speakers robotically retract back into the car, the paper bags disappear, and the cars drive off. Raj comes into the trailer, brushing the construction dust off his shiny suit and tie, insisting Richard will not be working on this property in the future but confesses he doesn’t have an immediate replacement. That doesn’t help, Raj, because my day doesn’t end until 5:00 p.m. and I don’t want to be here alone. He knows I called you. He’s not stupid. Yeah. I am the boss, alright. Way to take control of the situation.

Chapter Two

As I drive across the bay bridge to the city for my interview, I take in the staggering views and try to get comfortable about this new project. My purse is comfortably lounging in the other front seat. I’m surprised I don’t secure my purse by putting the seat belt around it, protecting it like the child or the pet it has become in my life. I’m glad I brought a change of clothes, my financial district clothes and not construction site clothes. I always feel very out of place in work boots on Montgomery Street, while all the other girls are wearing pumps or high heels. But I’m set today.

Bridge traffic is cooperating for a change, but as soon as I hit city streets, I crawl across the financial district. Shit. It’s 4:20. I don’t have the time to get to the public garage on Pine Street, so I head to the valet park under the building.

As I stop the car, Rich, the parking guy, approaches the car. Hi, Rich. I’m in a hurry. The keys are in it, I say as I open the door, grab my purse and suit bag, and fly into the alley and around the corner to the entrance of 300 California Street, the headquarters of H&S. Hank, my boss, is expecting me at 4:25, so he can brief me on the details of our new CTS project. I run into the elevator lobby and slide to a stop in front of the call buttons. Come on, come on, I say out loud as I constantly push the top ‘up’ illuminated button. I know this doesn’t make the elevator come any faster, but I keep on pushing it anyway. I need good elevator karma to get up to the 14th floor and in the office at 4:25. The elevator dings and the doors of the middle car of the south bank open. The elevator car is empty. Perfect. I have a chance at a direct flight to the 14th floor. Three… Four… Five… Ten… Eleven… Twelve. Finally, the doors open at the 14th floor and I run through the office towards Hank’s office. Just as I make the turn into Hank’s office, Scott Miller is walking out. Oh, excuse me, I say as I bounce off of him.

Scott looks up, smiles, and winks at me. I look at him, and his face lights up, like I hit a part of him that gave him more pleasure than he would expect in the middle of the day, in the office. I hate when guys wink at me. What does a wink mean anyway? It could mean anything… I like you, I’m sorry, thank you. But how is a girl to react? What is the appropriate ‘response’? A wink back, a look with an irresistible twinkle, an abbreviated sentence that uses the word ‘whatever’ in it somewhere.

So, how did it go? I say, ignoring the bump and the wink.

Those guys are such big dicks, Scott says.

Really? I ask, wondering what he is trying to tell me. It’s just not a real professional term thrown around a lot at the office. So does that mean you did or didn’t like them?

As Scott rolls his eyes, he finally looks at me, and his smile levels off. I look at him with an ‘irresistible twinkle’ and he walks away. So the only clue to help me in my interview is that they are big dicks. Great. Guys are so weird.

I turn to finally enter Hank’s office at 4:24. Shhh, Hanks says as he puts his index finger to his mouth while he listens on the phone. I stop dead in my tracks and even retreat a bit. I look up and Hank waves me into his office, so I sit down at exactly 4:25, throw my suit bag and purse on the chair, and I start to think about how nice I will look in my high heels. What on earth am I going to sell these guys?

When I interviewed for my job with H&S, ‘THEY’ said selling was number one. ‘THEY’ said the most important thing that I can do as a project manager is develop a relationship with the client. ‘THEY,’ of course, are the company. ‘THEY’ make the company human, as if the company itself had expectations and goals about my employment, not my boss or the executives. And I had to accept the responsibility ‘THEY’ gave to me, just by accepting employment. ‘THEY’ want me to feel proud and important because I work here, enough to sell the company to others.

I hate to sell. I’m not a salesman. I’m an engineer. Engineers don’t make good salesmen. It’s because engineers believe what they are doing is much more important than who they are. People who are good salesmen believe they are much more important than what they are doing. But either way, if what you do jeopardizes who you really are, is it worth it? When I was accepted to engineering school, the first thing I wondered was what an engineer does. I just thought it was strange that I would study something that I know little about. It’s hard to be passionate about something I know nothing about.

I remember a job interview in college, where the interview guy asked, Where do you see yourself in ten years?

I answered, Married with two children.

He looked down at the list of interview questions, flustered and stuttering, and said, If you didn’t have to work, what would you do?

I answered, I’d play golf every day.

The next thing he said was, You must not want this job. I looked at him and thought,

Christ, of course, I want this job and I want to be married and I want two kids, and I want to golf every day. I want it all. I’m at an interview. I’m trying to be as honest as I can and answer the questions. This guy was really off base to say such a thing. Why would he say such a thing? Maybe he never interviewed an honest girl that wanted it all. Maybe all the other girls he interviewed lied to him, they weren’t stupid enough to tell the truth.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a job offer, because he didn’t think I wanted the job. Even worse, he thought I wasn’t qualified for the job because of the way I answered his questions. But I know I answered all the questions correctly, I got all the answers right. I got an A. WRONG. He reported I answered all the questions wrong. What I was supposed to do was sell myself at the interview. I was supposed to say the answer to the question that would get me the job. I was supposed to lie. I told the truth. I was honest. That seems so wrong. I was raised by parents who taught me to always tell the truth. Never lie. My parents also told me to be good because Santa Claus was going to bring me lots of presents if I did. No wonder we are all so fucked up. Still, to this day, I’m trying to figure out when it’s OK to tell the truth, and when it’s OK to lie. Do you lie about what you believe in or what really is? I don’t want to lie to myself about myself. I don’t want to become someone I’m not, just to make a living.

I focus back on the sales pitch at hand. Just think me, me, me, and me, as I sing in the key of G. I’m perfect for this job, Mr. Hanson. Scott said you are a really big dick, and Mark prefers working for big dicks. Did Mark tell you I prefer big dicks…as a matter of fact, I—Hank finally hangs up the phone at 4:29.

Hi, Loretta, Hank belts, and my head springs up immediately, losing any and all of my thoughts in the process. Hank Evans, operations manager of the San Francisco office of H&S, and my boss for