Sexual Tension

Some Men Find Office

Is a Little Too Exciting With Women as Peers

Distraction, Anxiety Grow; Women Parry Advances, Struggle for Acceptance

'I'm Here to Work, Not Flirt'

A WALL STREET JOURNAL News Roundup "To me," says John Bullion, "the amount of sexual attraction is tremendous. Women dress better. They have more money, they're more visible."

Mr. Bullion is talking about his office, a unit of International Multifoods Corp. in Chicago, where he is a single, young executive. Like most American offices, his has changed dramatically in the past 10 yearsit's full of women. Not clerical helpers but professional colleagues, women who share the men's background and interests and are likely to be bright, energetic and independent. "Hormones will be hormones," says Mr. Bullion.

The change, of course, is but one element of the past decade's sweep toward a wider role in society for women; as such, it's generally considered welcome if not overdue. But the adjustment hasn't been easy for everyone, especially in the office. And sexual attraction is only part of the story. A New Set of Rules

Consider the men. For them, the office is no longer a male club. The unspoken rules have changed. Some of the old easy ways of relating-the jokes, the banter about sports and women-aren't appropriate anymore. Having a female boss can be awkward, even embarrassing or threatening, especially for an older man.

For the women, the office often seems as if it is a male club, a strange and hostile place with arcane customs and impenetrable hierarchies. The only way to get ahead is to work harder than the men. Even then, some of them still treat women like sexual toys. And a woman's career is much more vulnerable than a man's to the ill effects of innuendo.

Those are some of the impressions, at any rate, that emerge, from dozens of interviews with management-level men and women in cities across the country about how they get along with each other at work. It's a sensitive subject, one that many people declined to talk about for the record and some wouldn't even discuss anonymously. But despite the anxiety, the overall feeling was that "things are getting better" even though the battle of the sexes is likely to be eternal.

One of the most evident differences in the new office environment, as Mr. Bullion notes, is that it's sexier. As another male executive put it, "Men and women together in close relationships, whether at work or elsewhere, means a state of risk. There are going to be temptations and sexual attractions, and people are fooling themselves if they don't face that. A man and a woman working together cannot have the same kind of work relationship as two men or two women."

"Boy, She's Pretty"

John, a 32-year-old account executive at a Minneapolis-St. Paul advertising agency. confesses that pulchritude is distracting. "It's tough for me to look at someone and not think, 'Boy, she's pretty," he says. "I find myself spending a little too much time looking at them and not listening to what they're saying."

Not that a little sexual electricity might not increase production. Gloria Brown Anderson, the managing editor of the Miami News, says, "People working together can do very creative work under the influence of mutual infatuation. In some cases the qual ity of the work is improved, because there's something very rich about sharing something with someone who knows you well."

Mrs. Anderson stops short of advocating affairs, and in fact most people appear to stop short of yielding to temptation. "It isn't worth the hassle," says a female controller for a Florida real-estate company.

"A professional shies away from that kind of thing in the office," says John Moore, a vice president of Robinson-Humphrey Co., an Atlanta investment banking and securities-research concern. "Not that there isn't any attraction, but I think you draw the line."

"It's a Responsibility"

"I build an iron fence around me for 12 hours a day," says Dana Becker, a division manager for AT&T in Chicago who is 29 and single. "That isn't really me, but I feel it's a responsibility I have to take as a woman, to make clear I'm not available. I'm sociable; lunch or drinks after work is fine, because it's part of getting things done. But if I find myself attracted to a colleague, I just don't allow it to go anywhere, and I don't let myself get into a situation with that person where it might be hard to control my feelings."

Ann, a 30-year-old attorney in a Midwestern law firm, wasn't able to keep her emotions so firmly in check, and now she says going to work is an ordeal. She and a male attorney at the firm, both married, confessed a strong sexual attraction to each other over dinner one evening after working closely on cases for a month.

They discussed the matter like reasonable people and decided not to have an affair because of the effect it would have had on their marriages and their jobs. But the deci sion has been "emotionally hard," says Ann. "I feel I'm a schizoid personality. I don't know what to do with this feeling. I'm just waiting for it to go away."

Mary, 30, a middle-level manager for a large package-goods concern in Dallas, candidly admits having had an affair with a senior executive at her former company. She was "naive, fresh out of business school."

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she says. "It occurred to me afterward that it certainly wouldn't do me any good in that company." Indeed, the affair was a factor in her leaving.

That's usually the case, says Jeanne Bosson Driscoll, a Williamstown, Mass., consultant who specializes in male-female office relations. Because the man is almost always in the more powerful position, she says, the woman "stands more of a chance of getting the ax and having to leave." If the pair marries, she says, the woman more often leaves the company.

Despite all the talk of women "sleeping their way up" in an organization, most of the women interviewed couldn't think of a single instance. One woman, who was di vorced and 30 when she became her organization's first female vice president, says, "If all the rumors about my sleeping my way up were true, I wouldn't be able to walk."

A man once asked Barbara Sayre Casey, then a vice president of Kaufman & Broad Inc., a Los Angeles home builder, whom she slept with to get her job. "I was so of fended," she recalls. "I'm sure others thought it, but he was the only one crude enough to ask. I told him, The chairman, the president and all the members of the board."

Not that there aren't offers. Many women interviewed had some kind of story to tell about unwelcome advances from bosses, peers or clients. One woman who had just taken a managerial job at a large corporation was startled to find her married boss knocking on her door late one night. "He told me he was madly in love with me," she says. She rebuffed him. Soon, she says, "he was punishing me on the job. He gave me tougher reviews. He was vindictive. He even told me this later.

"I was new, insecure in my position and threatened. It made me angry and affected my work. I didn't go to top management because I didn't think those people would stand up for me." Talking It Out

Finally, after a year, she worked up enough courage to talk with her boss about his behavior. "His problem was that he wasn't used to working with women," she says. "I told him that you can like women as people and it doesn't have to be sexual. He apologized to me. He was fine after

that.

Cheryl Anne Newman, a 26-year-old plan ning officer with Bank of America's worldbanking division in San Francisco, tells of a time when she worked for another company and was interviewing the vice president of a big Los Angeles corporation. He turned to her, she recalls, and said, "You know. Cheryl, if you really understood this game, you'd come up to my hotel room and I'd give you all the information you want."

"That kind of thing is so degrading it makes me want to quit," she says. "It's - very hard to parry a proposition skillfully. It always comes as such a shock."

Many women try to laugh off advances, afraid to anger a boss or a client. But more are taking a direct approach. Janet Kiehl, 35 and single, supervises 500 people as an as 'sistant vice president of Illinois Bell in Chr cago. "I used to make light of advances.

crack a joke," she says, "but to someone who doesn't know me, that might seem a come-on. Now I'm very direct. I say, 'You and I are going to be working together, and I don't want anything to get in the way of our good working relationship. I don't smile when I say that."

Ways of Being Careful

Many men and women have worked out careful behavior patterns to avoid giving anyone a mistaken impression. Marilyn Stoutenberg, 33, a manager for Peat, Mar wick, Mitchell & Co., in Chicago, says, "If I've been friendly with a colleague at a staff function, I won't be seen leaving with him. even though we're going in opposite direc tions."

Bank of America's Miss Newman says, "I'll think twice about asking a man out for drinks after work, especially if he's the type who might get the wrong idea." Robert Ligi ett, a 37-year-old division manager at Michi gan Bell Telephone Co., says he has been careful to invite a male colleague for an af ter work drink before extending the same in vitation to a female co-worker. "I don'! want to be misunderstood," he says. Mr. Ligett's office is apparently a hotbed of gos sip. He recalls an occasion when he went to lunch with a female colleague. "By the time I got back," he says, "I had a call from a j man asking what was going on.")

"Delicately technical" behavior is the way Earl Gibson, a part-time consultant in! his 60s, describes his relationship with his boss, Diane Ballantyne, a 40-year-old manager of cataloging and engineering services at Rockwell International Corp. in Troy. Mich.

Mary Ann De Souza, 40, a captain in the San Francisco County sheriff's department, "never" mixes her business and personal i friendships. "I never have lunch or dinner" with subordinates or peers, she says, believ ing that such socializing leaves a woman. open to innuendo. "You have to protect your reputation," she adds.

For women, such concern definitely extends to the way they dress for the office. A 28-year-old Harvard M.B.A.. a vice presi dent in charge of acquisitions for a mediumsized New York firm, says she seeks to avoid making the men in her office "uncomfortable."

Beware Mother's Advice

"I have long, blond hair. I used to wear it down, curled, and I wore dresses to the of fice. I created a lot of animosity by trying to look nice. A lot of women create a furor by trying to do what their mothers taught them to do look pretty.

"I finally realized that even though I was! serious about my job, I didn't look it. So ! put my hair up in a bun, and I started wearing cotton shirts and ow! glasses and tai lored clothes to work. I look serious, like I'm here to work, not flirt."

The word many men and women use to describe that attitude is "professional," as when Maddie Ivy, a partner in Peat Marwick in New York, says: "Professional conduct doesn't lend itself to unwelcome advances."

Lynn Thompson Long, a 32-year-old vice president in charge of trade publishing at Houghton Mifflin Co., the Boston based publisher, believes, "Once a professional rela

April 14, 1981

By KATHRYN CHRISTENSEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STRkkt Journal

THE BEAUFORT SEA - Midnight ap proaches, and fatigue lines are carved in Bill Walter's unshaven face. Since noon, he and his six-man crew have been trying to jar loose the obstruction clogging the 15,000foot hole they're drilling through a sandbar off Alaska's northern coast.

His eyes on the gauges in front of him, Mr. Walter keeps one gloved hand on a con trol lever and another on a long brake handie, he is working a block of pulleys hanging in a derrick that towers 175 feet above the ground. The machinery screeches like a wounded elephant as it is raised, then slams down with a force that sends shudders through the rig floor. The monotonous pro cess halts only long enough to thaw the machinery that freezes in the Arctic temperature of 40 degrees below zero.

Just before his 12-hour shift ends and an other crew takes over, Mr. Walter is able to free the obstruction to some extent. Splattered with mud, he heads for camp knowing that the actual drilling of this wildcat, or exploration, well may not resume for days. But whether the task is drilling or "fishing" -oil field jargon for recovering equipment lost in the well-it is 24-year-old Mr. Walter who is directly in charge of Rig 84 while his crew is on duty.

A Blindfolded Surgeon

Some have compared Mr. Walter's job as an Arctic driller to that of a blindfolded surgeon performing an operation while standing across an auditorium from the patient. Using a collection of levers and knobs, Mr. Walter manipulates 1,500 horsepower and tons of iron through a hole that is already miles below and beyond him. His work is cold, dirty and dangerous. It is also lucrative: He is paid more than $90,000 a year.

As a high-school graduate, Mr. Walter is aware that he's earning more money than many men who have extensive educations and who are twice his age. Nevertheless, he says, "We're earning it up here."

"Up here" is the site of the West Mikkelsen No. 3 well in the Beaufort Sea. Just east of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field, the Beaufort was opened for drilling in late 1979 and is one of the state's newest exploratory fields. Drilling here this year is limited to the period be tween Nov. 1 and April 14, the time when ice is the strongest and thus most capable of preventing damage to

wildlife and the landscape in the event of oil spills.

Shell Oil Co. and its partners are spending more than $70,000 daily to drill at West Mikkelsen No. 3 well. High as those costs are, the potential rewards make drilling in the Beaufort Sea a gamble that Shell and other big oil companies are eager to take. Although no production has begun yet in the Beaufort, U.S. Geological Survey estimates say the area "most likely" holds 7.8 million barrels of still undiscovered but recoverable oil and 27 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered but recoverable gas.

But if the oil companies are counting on the promise of what may lie beneath the Beaufort, most of the 55 men working on this well are already banking on it. Some are former teachers or lawyers, others once were carpenters or bartenders. Ask what brings them to this isolated and frigid place - where most work 14 consecutive 12-hour days before taking seven days off-and they reply frankly that you can measure a man's

greed by how far north he has come. Mr. Waller answers: "Money, mainly. I sure can't say I came because it's 90 (degrees) below.

Mr. Walter is an employe of Brinkerhoff Signal Inc., the drilling contractor on West Mikkelsen No. 3. He has worked in oil fields from Wyoming to Canada since the age of 17, when he became discouraged by the prospect of laboring on his family's Montana farm for $500 a month. And he is adamant about staying in Alaska. Though he has a home in Wyoming, he has rented one in Anchorage, 800 miles south of here, and plans to build a house there. "They'd have to drag me back." he declares. "You learn a lot on this kind of well; up here, there are challenges you can't find anywhere else."

One of the biggest challenges on this well involves the direction at which the hole is being drilled. While Rig 84 sits less than a mile offshore on a sandbar indistingiushable

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from the snow-covered frozen sea, the hole it is drilling angles off diagonally more than a mile under the sea. "With such a deviated hole," Mr. Walter says, "you're asking for trouble."

And trouble has been obliging. To protect the pipe as it angles through the hole's iron casing, the drilling crews headed by Mr. Walter and Bruce Snodgrass have put 150 thick rubber protectors resembling collars on the top 4,500 feet of pipe. The "fishing" procedure that followed was necessary because, Mr. Walter says, "when we came up out of the hole, none of those rubbers were on the joints. Something down there was tearing them out."

The problem of breaking up and retriev ing the rubbers requires special equipment and delays drilling by more than a week. But such complications aren't unexpected on an oil rig. Earlier this year, Mr. Walter says. "I dropped two joints (30-foot lengths of pipe) down the hole." He is still incredulous that such a thing could have happened while he was at the controls. "I was positive I'd be run off (fired)," he says.

His first reaction was to peer down the miles-deep hole, an absurdly futile act that would have sent the roughnecks on his crew into howls if the situation hadn't been so serious. In the oil business, dropping so much as a wrench down the hole is grounds for dismissal. As it turned out, however, Mr. Walter was back on the rig shortly. "Bill's young, and he's a very good driller with lots of potential," says Robert Grote, a Shell foreman. Because of that and the fact we were considering altering direction (of the hole) a little anyway, we kept him. One thing we know is that he'll never make that mistake again."

Although Shell is the operator of this well, fewer than six of the 55 men here are Shell employes. Most work for the drilling contractor; the rest are employed by datalogging, food preparation and special consulting companies. From the more than $90,000 paid to each of the two drillers and tool pusher Terry Coleman, their supervisor. wages drop to about $40,000 for the man who helps the cook and makes the beds. Even that lesser figure can be a fortune, however, considering that these workers have no living expenses during their hitches on the rig. "You can come up here with five cents and go back loaded." says Mr. Walter.

The camp itself, a string of connected trailers resembling a barracks, stands about 50 yards from the rig but is barely visible because of the snow banked around it. In the surrounding terrain, subzero temperatures and ferocious winds create chill factors that, at 100 degrees below zero, are capable of freezing exposed flesh within seconds. Whiteouts strike frequently, making it impossi ble to distinguish the landscape from the sky beyond 25 feet.

Lack of snow, however, was a problem at one point during the drilling of this well. Shell had to complete by Nov. 1 a 17-mile ice road connecting the campsite with an airstrip; but at the time the road was being built, too little snow had fallen on the tundra to provide the base for a solid road.

Consequently, says M.L. Woodson, head of Shell's Alaska production operations, he ordered industrial show-making machines costing a total of $180,000. When that purchase order... hit Houston, they must've thought I was crazy," Mr. Woodson says.

Good Food

Life inside the camp is as comfortable as possible, and the food is both good and plentiful by any standards. Shell figures the men need about 6,000 calories a day. Four meals are served daily; one recent lunch included ham and turkey, several salads and vegetables and a half-dozen desserts prepared that morning by the camp baker. Steak is on the menu at least twice a week; prime rib, at least once.

The rules here are few but simple: no alcohol, no fighting, no drugs and no loud noise in camp. Infractions can send a man packing, though a bit of discreet drinking in Most quarters is occasionally tolerated. gambling is also forbidden, but men here have permission to play quarter-ante poker. Boredom is a big threat. Books and magazines in the become camp quickly dogeared, and the projector in the movie room runs almost continuously. "I like the isolation, but there are times when I wake up and don't know if it's noon or midnight, especially when it's dark all the time" (as it was from November until mid-January). says Mr. Walter, who spent Thanksgiving. Christmas and New Year's on the rig. Time to Worry

Some men spend their time worrying that their families will have problems while they're away for so long; others fret that their families will get along too well without them. Several, including Mr. Walter, are di vorced; he says he is convinced that oil fields and marriages mix about as well as oil and water.

"Men who spend any time in the oil field usually end up with three things: a gold watch, a diamond ring and divorce papers, says Donald Wester, an independent drilling consultant who is one of Shell's foremen on this well.

Still, Mr. Walter seems pleased with his life. Although he wants to be an engineer someday, he will go on to another drilling Job for Brinkerhoff once this job is finished. "People think we're nuts to do this, but I wouldn't trade it for anything," he says. "Until I became a driller. I never really knew what it meant to be mentally tired and challenged. The oil field has been good to me in more ways than paying my taxes."

His biggest responsibility is for the safety of his crew, no small task considering the amount of machinery he controls. "Every driller knows he's going to hit a wrong lever sometime and hurt somebody," he says. "but if anyone was ever killed, I'd have to give up the job if it was my fault." (So far, the most serious injury in camp has been the frostbite suffered by one worker.)

Goofing Off

As their two-week hitches wind down, every man in this camp is anxious to leave for a week in town." Shell flies the men to Anchorage, where some spend the week hunting and fishing. Others fly, at their own expense, to warm vacation spots or to families as far away as Arizona. None makes a gradual transition back to normal civilization.

"The best way I know to unwind is to party; sometimes I don't get to sleep for two days after I get out of here," says Mr. Walter. "I've goofed off as much money in seven days as I've made in 14.... Usually. though, after a week off, I'm ready to get back to the rig."

At the end of one recent two-week shift, Mr. Walter and a dozen other men fidget as they wait to board the cold Convair that Shell charters to transport then back to An chorage. Cowboy boots and tight jeans have replaced heavy boots, stained work clothes and hard hats. Once they are on board and strapped in the worn seats scattered around the plane's cargo, their worst fear is realized. There will be no drinking during this flight, thanks to the drilling crew's rowdy celebration of Mr. Walter's birthday on the group's last trip from the rig to Anchorage.

Once in the city, they quickly make up for that setback. The pressure of spending two weeks on the rig comes off like a barely controlled blowout: and by the time Mr. Walter settles down for dinner later in the evening, two of his well-lubricated friends have devised a new example of oil-field humor to make this week off a memorable

one

April 14, 1981