The letter from P.K. about her summer job sounded like heaven next to mine. I was in a beautiful costume shop in a big regional theater with plenty of equipment and even a cafeteria. I should have been happy, but the treatment that I (and the other interns) received from "the bosses" was horrible. Most of us came from graduate school programs but were treated as if we knew nothing. We were not checked out on the equipment. Our duties changed everyday, and something we had worked on the day before disappeared without a word. Had we sewn it correctly or made a mistake? We never knew.

I assumed that anything the cutters gave me would be correctly cut and ready to sew. But as I found out, one of them was not very careful and did not like any questions. "Just do your best," she would say acidly, and then she bad-mouthed us later, giving the "ruined" belt, collar, or whatever to another person.

God forbid we ever asked a design question. "Why is Ophelia in red," or "what slip is Olivia wearing with this?" were met with stares as if we were cats who had suddenly spoken. A collaborative, learning environment it was NOT.

After only a week, I called my teacher at school and could not hold back my tears of frustration. She was silent for a minute and then said, "I'm sorry to hear it's still like that." Then she told me some stories from twenty years before when she had been an intern there. Deja Vu. "Just get through it," she said. "Be quiet and hone your sewing skills. It's their loss because you'll never want to work there again and you are already very good."

Just that little bit of praise sustained me for the rest of the summer. No amount of good working conditions can make up for a disrespectful attitude by the bosses.

To your letter I say "been there, faced that." I have made it my life's work NEVER to treat anyone the way that I was treated at a certain theatre. In that way, what I learned there was without price. Many people over the years went through the same shop and we feel we are better teachers, designers and managers because of it, but not in the way we imagined when we went there.

Be assured that there are great places to work. Maybe theatres should have "letters of recommendation" on their job postings just as applicants have to have with their resumes. Just a thought, but I like it.

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