Vote on Desiree Davidson's Story
Were they afraid we were planning a coup d'etat?
I spent my first summer during Columbia Law School at a firm in Philadelphia described as one of the best places in the city for black lawyers. I believed that if there was any place where I would have an equal chance at opportunities, be treated fairly and succeed, this would be it. There were three black female summer associates out of sixty that year but any time all three of us were in an office talking, one of the partners would knock on the door to see how we were doing. It happened too often to be a coincidence that sometimes we would purposely agree to meet in so-and-so's office to test our theory that we were being monitored. Like clock work, ten minutes after we would get together a partner would stop by.
Tradeoffs
Within my 31 years at the company, because it was in California, slowly some of my bosses started to look like me. I worked for an Asian woman. She was a nightmare to work with. But she did move the initiative of getting more women in the workplace forward.
It wasn't news to anyone that my supervisor was vicious. I would get cut off when I tried to talk about it because nobody wanted to deal with it. I think they let her stay because of money. She is really smart.
When my company was acquired, I went from having a window office and all the perks of being a manager in a major corporation to sitting in a cubicle, where everyone sat in a cubicle. They had this value of "everyone is equal." This was the place where values were a really cool thing so it made it more tolerable to have lost my office.
