My friends like it when I tell this story because it makes them laugh. It’s laughable at first because of how bizarre it is. Because I like to make people laugh, I tell the story – it’s a real crowd pleaser. But, if I’m being honest with you, I don’t find it hilarious at all.
When I was 17, I was a dancer. That’s how I defined myself. I was a daughter, a sister, a best friend, a girlfriend, and a dancer.
The only night I had off from dancing was Monday. My other nights were filled with holding my core, straightening my knees, pointing my toes, and making my toenails bleed. My days were made up of barely being able to walk from the soreness in my hips. I was barely able to laugh from the pain in my stomach and back muscles. I could barely keep my eyes open out of the pure physical and mental exhaustion I felt from being a full-time high school student, on the student council, and dancing 14 hours a week.
On top of all of that, I needed a job. I needed to start saving for my expensive schooling in the big city next year and for all of the Christmas presents I wanted to buy. Besides, I had reached the age where it was no longer cute that I didn’t have a job yet.
I complained a lot about this when I was in photography class. That was when my photography teacher interjected. “This may be overstepping the line a bit,” she said. “But I just got an email about a student job posting that I think you could be great for.”
It was a company called the Trophy Specialists. She knew it sounded bizarre – that it was in the basement of a private home – but she told me to trust her. The owner had daughters who had gone to my high school and she knew his family. He made all the plaques for the arts and academic awards. My high school had a great relationship with the Trophy Specialists.
“I’ve met him,” she said. “He’s a very nice man.”
The job was perfect for me. The business closed 5:00 pm on weekdays and because it was just a few minutes away from school, I could work for two hours after school, eat dinner on the way to dance, and still have time to change into my dance clothes when I got to class. Also, the pay was twelve dollars an hour, much better than the $10.50 per hour my sister was making at the pizza place. Besides, Steve was a nice man. Sure, he had some weird things written into his contract and a wall of photos in his living room that I found strange. But he had grown up daughters so I figured it had to be okay.
He gave me a tour of the basement which, from my knowledge, looked enough like a business and introduced me to the rest of the girls who seemed happy enough. He helped me get my coat on, told me I had a nice smile, and drove me home.
I must admit, it took me a while to convince my mother and other mothers that were close to me to let me accept this job offer. It made them uncomfortable that the business was run in the basement and that the only people employed were young women like me. Most of all, they hated that at some point during my employment, I had to wear a dress and cook this man’s dinner.
I told them it wasn’t like that. He had also employed a boy my age at the same time. He needed us to cook dinner every other night because his wife had recently died, his daughters were busy with their own children and, apparently, he was useless in the kitchen. The boy also had to wear a suit and cook dinner at some point. He only drives us home and puts our coats on for us because he is teaching us how we should be treated. I wish I had listened to these women.
*
My official job was assembling trophies and plaques, silk-screening t-shirts, engraving various objects and sorting inventory.
I hated it as soon as I started. It was hot and it smelled like burning acrylic. Every surface in the basement was covered by hundreds of different sized screwdrivers, nails and hammers. There were desks and tables placed haphazardly throughout the basement and for some reason there were never enough comfortable chairs for the employees to work on. We had to play rock, paper, scissors, the loser being the one who had to sit on a fold out lawn chair. There were boxes everywhere of unsorted donations that people would bring in when they had decided they had accumulated enough “participant” trophies for one lifetime, waiting for a down season to be sorted into piles of useful tools and garbage. There was a bedroom in his house converted to a storage space for all of the trophy figurines you could think of, with shelves floor to ceiling, wall to wall, with baskets labelled with things like “bowling men,” “spelling bee,” and almost any other event you could think of. It truly was a graveyard where silver men, holding various poses, went to die. There was also a wall of pictures with every girl who ever worked there; he would proudly show it off and say “my girls.” For some reason, he never got around to posting the photos of the two boys he had ever employed.
In order to be good at the job, you had to be a perfectionist and a perfectionist I am not. You had to be good with pounding nails into wood, cutting metal so that all the lines were straight as an arrow and paying very close attention to detail. Otherwise; he would hold up your work to you and say in the nicest voice, “Now, if you were a sponsor of a soccer team, would you want this plaque hanging in your office?” and then you would have to redo it.
Steve did a lot of things in life like this. He was the type of man that made sure everything was to his advantage and that everyone either respected him or felt bad for him. To the girls, he would complain about his cataracts and talk about how much he loved his wife—how hard it had been for him when she died. For his male customers, he would show them the garage with his vintage car and his basement with the girls who worked for him. He showed us off as if we were the trophies he was selling.
He called us his “TroSpec Girls,” a cute, short form for the name of the company. It caught on because it made us sound like movie characters.
The first time I met Steve, I had to hold down a laugh because I had never met someone who reminded me so much of Humpty Dumpty. He was shiny, round, and had the most fragile masculinity I had ever experienced.
Then there were the rules. Once the clock struck five, we would all have to run upstairs and wait for Steve to come up because we couldn’t leave the house until he helped us put our coats on. Before he gave us our pay-cheques we would have to smile for him. If there was no one to drive us home and it was dark out, he would drive us.
No matter how busy my mother was at work, she was always there to pick me up.
And then there were the dinners; they had their own set of rules.
At five o’clock, he would give whoever was cooking money for groceries. He would send her to the grocery store around the corner. Then, she would buy everything that was needed and come back. If she was lucky Steve would pick her up from the store, otherwise she would have to walk back with everything. Before she could get ready, Steve would take her picture—it was in the contract. Then, she would put her dress on, her make-up and Steve would take another picture.
At 6 o’clock, Steve took a shot of Irish cream liquor and the first course of the meal would start getting prepared. The girl had to take her hair out of her ponytail at this point. According to Steve, this was no different than a restaurant having dress code and appearance requirements for their waitresses. The appetizer would be served. The main course would be cooked and that would be served, then there was dessert. The kitchen would be cleaned and then she could go home. Normally, when all was said and done, she wouldn’t get home until 11:30 pm.
The night I did my first dinner also happened to be the first International Women’s Day that I remember knowing about. I wore my red dress in solidarity and chose a girl power playlist for the evening. Because this was my first dinner, I got to have a partner. Lauren cooked the dinners the most often because she was the best cook. She was my age but we didn’t have a lot in common; she did things that were against the rules like smoking marijuana and partying on the weekends. I cared way too much about my grades. But due to the nature of the night, she convinced me to drink some wine to calm my nerves—I had never done this before.
I don’t remember what we served as the appetizer or dessert, but I remember being in awe as Lauren made up the brown butter sage tortellini recipe on the spot. Cooking just doesn’t come naturally to me. The dinner went okay—Steve made comments about my prom dress and told me how hot I looked in it when I showed him a picture of it. He also taught me how to pour wine because it is something that “every woman should know how to do.” I made a point of pushing that comment from my mind.
Then came the dessert. He asked us to come join him. It was 9:30 at night, a Wednesday, and I remember being sad that I was missing dance class. My boyfriend kept texting to make sure I was okay—telling me that he would come pick me up, but I needed to be paid.
At this point in the story my friends stop laughing. You see, Steve knew I was a dancer and he called me in because he wanted me to show him something.
“The girls perform for me all the time,” he said with a smile.
I told him no. I laughed him off. I told him that I had not prepared anything. I was in a dress and did not have my dance shoes. Besides, my ankle was hurting from standing all night. I said every excuse that came to my brain. I was making one thing clear—I wouldn’t be dancing for this man in living room at 10 pm on a school night. He kept persisting and I kept saying no.
Lauren, bless her soul, came to my rescue. She sang a song so I wouldn’t have to dance—I don’t remember what she sang. Then the dinner was over, we changed back into our pants and by the time everything was said and done, it was 1:00 am. My boyfriend was about ready to call the police. My mom was almost getting ready to start her day.
This is where my friends yell in outrage at my story. Before I left, Steve pulled me aside and said: “You did great this evening but if you’re wondering why Lauren made more money than you it was because you refused to dance for me and she sang.”
I wish I had listened to the mother and other mothers close to me. They have much more experience with what older men can convince younger girls to do. They have seen things and no longer have the naïve view of the world that I had when I was 17.
This is the night I learned that even though old men seem nice, that is not always the case. Something that I will pass onto my daughter.
At the end of this story, my friends always wonder why I haven’t reported him. But here is why I didn’t – Steve knew what he was doing, he had studied the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. The only thing I could find that could stick him was the fact that he made us dress in a certain way because we could argue that it was gender discrimination. However, he took care of that when he hired a boy.
Reading an article that came out during the MeToo movement, I learned about something called the “Grey Zone.” This refers to instances where it is unclear if an incident can be called sexual assault or not. I was uncomfortable and left with an icky feeling, but nobody did anything that hurt me and it felt like it was not really worth ruining an old man’s life over.
As I am writing this now, I am wondering if I am making a mountain out of a molehill. Women who have experienced far worse were not believed. When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Stormy Daniels reported their rapes, that is what they were told. Those men went on to become some of the most powerful men in the world.
So, what would I report—that I was uncomfortable because I had to make dinner? Because I had to wear a uniform? Because I wasn’t tipped for bad service? That’s what Steve would say. He would still have the most established and successful trophy business in my hometown.
I met up with Lauren the other day for lunch because we ended up at the same university. She was fired from the Trophy Specialists last summer because she refused to have her picture taken by Steve. After three years of cooking most of the dinners, she still had her picture taken every time and when she was refused, she was fired.
We are TroSpec Girls and we’ve been through things together. Things other people only laugh at because they can’t quite believe it’s real. We are TroSpec Girls watching an invisible line, asking how far they need to go in order for it to be crossed.