Viola gets her due.

“Great. News. Everyone! Please listen up, most of you have known me for years, and it has been a real trip working with each of you. I have some truly great news. I QUIT!” Viola woke up with a snap. Damn it was only a dream. But today was the day. She has been waiting for this her whole life. Every grueling weekend, while others spent letting their hair down, and cutting lose, Viola was working very hard on one project in particular. The worst was that she couldn’t tell anyone. She knew that the risks were too great.

Viola Snapztswitz was a hardworking 32 year old woman who had been in the same dead end job for 13 years. She had watched over again and over again, her male counterparts go up through the ranks. Her boss was the only female in the company who had made it to such a high position. And her boss Eleanor Rankle liked Viola right where she was, she needed her after all, and without her would likely be found out as not being as top notch as she had claimed. Years of taking credit for Viola’s hard work had paid off big time.

Finally in 1963, two years ago Viola had finally snapped, no one could tell of course, because of Viola’s cheery disposition. This was the last straw for Miss Snapztswitz.

At the end of that sad Friday when Viola went home alone to her apartment with her cat, which she had been left by her funny great aunt, she sat at her perpetual table for one in her small kitchen and began plotting. Viola was not malicious in nature and so it wouldn’t be within her to go after her boss, whom she knew stole all of her credit.  No, instead Viola would find her passion again, for she was truly an amazing chemist. But being a woman at this time meant too many closed doors.

When she graduated from the college as one of the first women to graduate in that once predominantly male only university, somehow she graduated at the top of her class, despite all of the jeers, and those trying to steal credit for her work. The misery came after graduation when Viola had all of these once wonderful seeming opportunities close shut in her face when none of the top science labs felt it was ready to allow a woman in its doors to be more than a secretary. A secretary, was what they thought this young woman was interviewing for. So many of the men laughed her out of the office, a woman scientist they scoffed. Not in my lifetime, they swore.

Eventually she met her boss in an interview for a job as a secretary at a makeup factory. At least, she thought, she could work her way up, I mean a female boss would have to understand how hard it is in this world to be a woman, a smart woman, who required a more fulfilling pursuit than to just answer calls and schedule lunch meetings. For the first few years her boss Eleanor placated Viola, teasing her with hopes of promotion, and great acclaim for all of the brilliant ideas she brought to the table, but just a little more time, you know how men are, her boss would say, we need to ease them into it.

Viola didn’t care much for makeup; she cared more about infectious diseases. However, these were the cards she was dealt. And so just as her funny aunt had said to her so many times, screw the lemons, make whatever you want. Viola always just thought she was kooky.  She never even liked cats but took in Leroy out of respect for her aunt. Leroy is who gave her the idea. One day Leroy got into Viola’s bag, looking for the half-finished tuna sandwich she had forgotten about. Poor Leroy had a horrible reaction to the makeup samples that work insisted all the female employees try out, cheaper than bringing in test subjects.

Goodness, thought Viola, as she watched Leroy’s skin flare up and swell. If this made him react like this, just think what it would do to women! She had to do something. This could be her calling. And so her plan began.

Many long weekends of researching cosmetics, ingredients, and then looking up what those ingredients had been originally created for opened up a whole untapped world to Viola and she hoped women at large. As a male dominated industry, which is pretty funny considering men didn’t wear makeup. No wonder they didn’t care what harsh and cheap chemicals went into covering the imperfections of their wives. Viola did. She cared.

Finally after all this time, and her easy access to poor Leroy, she had done it.

She dressed with fervor put on the makeup she had created from scratch and headed to the bus, to head into the city, to go to work. A funny thing happens when you have the same routines every day, you start to recognize the same people on your route, and you may even start a friendly chat. Viola was very chatty as at work she wasn’t allowed to talk outside of what her job demanded. Her boss was insistent on this for she knew if Viola had the opportunity to spill about everything her boss had stolen from her, her boss would surely be ruined.

On Viola’s bus there was a nice old man who was set in his ways and preferred to continue riding the bus he had met his wife, long since passed from cancer. It was a comfort to him, and he felt he was able to be with her every day twice a day on this bus. He had noticed Viola one day, after having spent years on this bus with her, she was really ecstatic a few months ago and smiled for the first time, that he knew of. He started to chat her up about simple things, weather, even fashion, makeup after all he was the CEO of what Viola would find out later to be her employers number one competitor.

He believed in fate, and the strong magic this bus held, so he knew meeting Viola was no accident. Mr. Henry Peabody, of Peabody Cosmetics, took an interest in what Viola thought and her ideas for the way the world could change for a woman with the right makeup application. He patiently waited for her years of trial and error; after all she was working with limited resources in her tiny apartment, on poor Leroy, the cat she never wanted.

Viola stepped on her morning bus and smiled brightly to Harry, which is what Mr. Peabody insisted she call him. Harry could not believe how amazing Viola looked her skin radiated beauty and confidence, and without his being able to tell really that she was wearing it, had it not been for the week before when she was horribly broken out from another failed home beauty product. “I did it!” She said.

Why yes you did, he said. He hired her on the spot to lead his top team of scientists and researchers for Peabody Cosmetics. She accepted on the spot. Instead of going straight to her job, she went with Mr. Peabody to his, to talk to human resources and go over her contract. Harry stayed in the room to make sure she was well compensated for her clearly exceptional intelligence in the field.  He insisted she make more than what his current top employees earned, with the insistence that her cat Leroy be brought to him at his estate. Viola was happy to oblige, now she would have access to thousands of resources and Leroy did his part and deserved to be spoiled by the cat loving Harry Peabody. He also insisted that she be put up in the company Townhouse where his top clients and international scientists stayed when visiting. It was in the heart of the west side and blocks away from work.

Viola had only one compromise; she insisted that a car service bring her and pick her up from her old bus stop so that she could still have her fire side chats with Harry. He was more than happy to oblige. Human resources and the team she would be in charge of were more than a little miffed, a woman scientist! They all murmured, But too bad, they would have to get over it. Viola would bring this company to the top of cosmetics worldwide for the next three decades back to back. Somehow they managed to get over it, especially with the huge pay bumps, and more females being given the opportunity to have leading roles in the industry and to move up through the ranks.

But before all of this, Viola was taken in the town car to her soon to be old job. She pushed her way through the doors shoving past the men who used to shove past her. “Great news everyone, I quit!”

-Samantha Bremekamp