The Rise to Success in the Office: Female Style

Brad White, a friend of Crooked Timber, was home in Salt Lake City recently. His mother, Jackie White had suddenly died. It was a good death, as they go; Jackie went just as she raised a rather large G&T to her many friends.

As Brad tidied and settled Jackie’s affairs, he found stuffed at the back of a drawer an article she’d written. Going by the other documents it was with, he reckons it was written in the late 1960s or early 1970s. As far as we can tell, it was never published.

Here is some clear-eyed advice advice written for American women in the workplace, not long after the Mad Men era. Almost fifty years on, the gist of it is still relevant to many women in many more places.

The Rise to Success in the Office: Female Style

Jackie White



You start as a secretary, of course, unless it’s a one-girl office, where you may have benevolently been given the title of Office Manager.

When the boss rings, buzzes or shouts, run like Pavlov’s dog with pad and pencil in hand. Smile a lot, even if you are in physical pain or just got up on the wrong side of bed – you must be cheerful at all times, only he is allowed bad humour. If you’re young and have nice legs, cross them in full view. If you’re older and have varicose veins, scoot up to the front of his desk, so your legs are hidden.

It will help you considerably if you voluntarily clean up the ladies room or the lunch room once in a while. For this, you might be congratulated on your ingenuity.

If, after about a five year period, you have corrected his grammar, acted dumb about his female phone calls, faithfully brought his coffee in each morning, and taken the blame from the Board members for his stupid mistakes involved in the typing of the minutes of the last meeting, you may then become a Department Manager.

To be a success as a Department Manager, you must do the following:

— Don’t complain because the Personnel Manager hires the employees for your Department, yet the male Department Managers get to hire their own. Remember, you’re just a woman – what do you know ?

— When you attend Department Manager meetings, don’t say too much – nod your head up and down a lot, smile and just kind of agree with what seems to be the most popular opinion. A dissenting opinion from a man is objective thinking – from a woman it’s called “being negative”.

— Don’t openly show too much initiative or the men Department Managers may think you’re after their job. Give the impression any idea you have must have originally come from one of them.

— Don’t accept the job they offer you upstairs. They will tell you even though you lose your title of Department Manager, you will make more money. Chances are they’re trying to figure out a way to put a man in your job, because it looks better that way.

If you stay enough years and the company grows, attrition will probably force them to make you an officer of the company. This will be an “Assistant” something. (There isn’t anything else they can do with you.)

To be successful at this:

— Take the executive parking spot they have been saving for you at the back of the lot directly under the rain spout of the building next door; and don’t complain when you are expected to be the company taxi service in your car and with no reimbursement for gas.

— Try not to notice when the men executives go golfing on Friday and ignore you – you’d just have to let them win anyway.

— When you find out on Thursday morning there were important company policies set in the locker room at the Club after the company Wednesday night basketball game, act like you knew it would come to that all along.

— When you find out the kid in the next office they just hired is getting $400 a month more than you for walking around with his hands in his pockets trying his damndest to look important, don’t complain.

— When you are introduced as the “oldest employee” instead of the one with the longest term of service and you’re used as an example of “what this company does for women”, don’t let on it’s all a big farce.

If you let any of these things bother you, you will soon be known as a typical, crusty, ornery old career woman.

Just remember – Keep smiling and don’t forget the rule: Work like a dog, think like a man, And get paid like a woman!

Jackie’s original typed article:



Jackie with colleagues, 1961 (front row, black dress):