Return to note 12 Within a week of the initial accident, I had another “fenderbumper” (no damage to either car) to the rear of my car in a parking garage. This seemingly inconsequential accident may have reinforced the hypervigilance I was experiencing and added to the length of time required for me to react to perceived threats at a more normal level.
Return to note 13 “Merriam Baxter” is a pseudonym adopted to protect the privacy of my friend and her family.
Return to note 14 According to Merriam Webster’s Third International Dictionary, a person who exhibits no regret or is “insensible to disgrace”
is behaving in a “shameless”
or “brazen”
manner, implying disrespect and hardness unsuitable to the occasion.
Return to note 15 Baxter consulted a lawyer about her termination rights because she judged that the firing was related not to any incompetence of hers but rather was related a) to her superior’s desire to cut departmental costs before the company’s sale was completed and b) to a pattern and practice of selective discharge based on age and sex. She provided her attorney with a record of her supervisors’ comments made about her:
I asked Male Director why you didn’t have this job, Merriam, and he told me that you were a Cadillac performer in a Studebaker body. And you know he drives a Cadillac. He [Male Director] said he just could not picture you sitting at his senior staff meetings.
Baxter also had documented other incidences. In follow-up conversations to interviews for a position they were filling, her supervisor voiced rejection of candidates based solely on their ages. During the company’s pre-sale negotiations, he asked her questions about the expense of her early retirement to the company. She reported to me how, when she complained about the repetition of these and similar comments to a female vice-president of Human Resources—the very person who was to investigate such complaints—her complaints were minimized and denied by the response: “Well, Male Director is a very visual person.”
These comments, considered with evidence provided by other complainants from the same company represented by Baxter’s attorney, suggested a pattern of discrimination in favor of female executives who were young and beautiful as portrayed by advertising-models and constituted, according to Baxter’s attorney, sufficient grounds for filing suit against the corporation. However, Baxter chose not to pursue the uncertain outcome of the suit, which was her opportunity to clear her professional reputation, because she judged that her family needed the surety of her severance package more.