As with many jobs, the most challenging part of Mary Richards’s job isn’t the work itself; it’s having to deal with her coworkers. She’s the only woman in the newsroom and, often, the lone voice of reason. She plays the unofficial role of office mediator, smoothing over everyone else’s bumps. When Mr. Grant blows a gasket, she’s the one who tells him to knock it off. When the usually egotistical Ted has a rare moment of self-doubt and fears he’ll be replaced, Mary gives him a boost of confidence. When Ted mangles Murray’s artfully written copy on the 6:00 p.m. news, it’s Mary who cools things between them, not that Ted really had much clue what was going on. Remember—this is the guy who has a hard time pronouncing Chicago.
Compared to Ted, who is constantly running his mouth off about something stupid, and Mr. Grant, who is often barking orders, Murray is a relatively low-maintenance coworker. He’s more sensitive than the other guys in the office, but his constant negativity and snarkiness can get tired real fast. He’s a good listener, and also a good gossiper, and not the best at keeping secrets. Then in season 4, Sue Ann, a.k.a. the Happy Homemaker, arrives with her innuendos and snide remarks. She’s worse than the guys. But somehow, Mary doesn’t let it get to her, even when Sue Ann says things like, “Oh, dear, sweet, innocent Mary,” in the most condescending way.
Mary sees the best in people and doesn’t let her coworkers’ annoying quirks and personality flaws drive her crazy—although sometimes it’s not so easy! She also knows that there’s more to each of her coworkers than their most annoying traits, a good lesson for anyone with coworkers. Even though her coworkers occasionally drive her batty, she cares about them and treats them with respect. Sometimes she’s too understanding. It clearly annoys Sue Ann, who tells her, “Mary, you help everyone with his problems. You get a lot of credit for it too, affection even. And now you must help me prove that I can be a giving, understanding, sympathetic person like you. If you don’t, I’ll turn on you like that (snaps fingers)!”
Though it takes her time to grow into the role of associate producer, and later, producer, Mary is totally competent, a real grown-up (maybe the only one in the room). Her coworkers know they can count on her to show up for them. When new management comes in and axes Mr. Grant, it’s Mary who heads to see the eccentric cowboy star–turned–station owner Wild Jack Monroe (played by cowboy-turned-actor Slim Pickens) to get his job back—and she succeeds. “I suppose you feel like Mary Poppins or something,” Mr. Grant says. That’s his way of saying, “Thank you.”
Despite her natural people-pleasing tendencies, Mary learns to assert herself at work and to put Ted in his place. In time, she becomes a real boss lady! Here are just a few of the life lessons we can learn from Mary’s experience in the WJM newsroom:
LIFE LESSON:
Learn to Take Charge
It’s hard to take charge if you don’t think you deserve the opportunity you’re given. Mary Richards has a serious case of what we’d now call imposter syndrome. She doesn’t think she deserves her job, and early on, she seems reluctant to assert herself. One time, when she’s put in charge of the office and someone calls asking for the boss, she places them on hold, takes a moment, and then answers in a deep voice, pretending to be a man. Some of that insecurity probably stems from the fact she had initially applied for the secretary job but was handed the associate producer job without any prior experience. But it also reflects the reality of the times, when it was rare for a woman to work in a TV newsroom. In fact, it was rare for a woman to have any job aside from nurse, teacher, or secretary. And then after getting married and having kids—because that was, of course, the ultimate goal—you were expected to stay home and be a housewife, like Laura Petrie. So it’s totally understandable that Mary wouldn’t be confident in her new role.
At first, she’s got a big title but no responsibilities to go with it. When she’s initially hired as associate producer, she assumes she’ll be busy with meaningful work. Instead, on her first day at WJM, she’s left to sharpen pencils. When she finishes sharpening pencils, she starts breaking pencils so she’ll have something else to do. She asks her new boss, Mr. Grant, for something to keep her busy, and he tells her, “I’m too busy to keep you busy.”
She asks her new coworker why Mr. Grant hired her if he doesn’t have work for her to do. “Maybe he was bombed,” Murray replies. Mary looks shocked. “No, I mean it,” insists Murray.
Mary’s not sure what to make of his comment, but she realizes that if she’s going to make it in this job, she’s going to have to learn how to deal with her gruff, maybe-bombed boss and kooky coworkers. But more than that, she’s going to have to go out of her comfort zone and learn to speak up and take charge.
Taking charge doesn’t come easily to Mary Richards, but she learns to do it when she has no other choice. During a snowstorm on a local election night, the phone lines go down, and Mr. Grant forces Mary to take charge of the newsroom. “You want me to be in charge? But that’s your job,” she says, stuttering. “No, my job is telling you what your job is.” Mary tells Mr. Grant that she’s not good at being a boss. “In order to be in charge, you have to be able to assert authority, and I’ve just never been any good at that.” (Note: Do not say this to your boss.) Lou has no time or patience for Mary’s insecurity.
She heads to the set preparing to give instructions, but she struggles to find the courage to order anyone around. Instead, she apologetically whispers, “I’m sort of in charge of the show tonight.” Not surprisingly, the crew ignores her. But by the end of the episode, when everyone in the newsroom is ready to call the election so they can go home after a long night, Mary asserts authority. They haven’t yet heard the official results, and Mary doesn’t want to risk announcing the wrong winner. She tells Ted that if he declares a winner on-air, he’s fired. He can’t tell if she’s bluffing, but he doesn’t risk it. Her strategy works, and for once, Ted doesn’t say the wrong thing. “I just opened my mouth and ‘you’re fired’ came out. I guess I’m not so bad at being in charge after all,” Mary tells Rhoda.
By season 4, Mary again asks for more responsibilities. “Mr. Grant, after working here for three years and doing every little piddly job from ordering paper clips to tweezers, I think I’m ready for a little more responsibility, something challenging, something difficult.” He wants her to hire a new sportscaster, but first she’s got to fire the old sportscaster, Ed Kavanagh. She balks at that. “I’ve never fired anyone in my life. I had a cleaning lady once I couldn’t fire, so I moved!”
She takes Ed to lunch, thinking it will soften the blow, but he gets the wrong idea and thinks she’s hitting on him. He wraps his arm around her shoulder, and when she tries to fire him, he won’t let her get a word in edgewise. “Why don’t you just let me take it from here on in?” he asks Mary, taking her hand and kissing it.
She’s left with no choice but to give it to him straight: “Ed, you’re fired.”
He thinks she’s joking. He starts laughing and continues to kiss her hand. When he realizes she’s not kidding, he’s not having it. His male ego is threatened. “No broad is going to fire Ed Kavanagh. How about that?”
Mary is pissed. “Well, Ed, you’re fired. A broad just fired you.” You go, girl!
Mary works her way up to producer by season 5, but she still has to push for more responsibilities to accompany the title. She doesn’t wait for Mr. Grant to give her these responsibilities, nor does she go ahead and take them on her own. In typical Mary fashion, and true to the time, Mary asks very politely, “Since you’ve made me a producer a week ago, I just feel I should be doing more. Supervising somebody. Can’t you give me something to do? I don’t care how small or insignificant.” He asks her to fix his desk chair. Now that’s just rude. “Mr. Grant, I am not a chair-squeak fixer,” she says. “I’m the producer.” Damn straight you are! Mary may not have shattered the glass ceiling, but at least she cracked it.
LIFE LESSON:
Stand Up to Your Boss (When Necessary)
From their very first scene together, where he tells her, “You’ve got spunk… I hate spunk,” Mary’s relationship with her boss, Mr. Grant, is… complicated. First off, everyone calls him Lou except for Mary, who insists on calling him Mr. Grant. Secondly, Mr. Grant treats Mary like a secretary and sometimes as an office wife, asking her to make his coffee, buy his wife a birthday present, and, once he’s divorced, drop off his suits at the cleaners. He proudly declares himself a “male chauvinist pig” and dares her to disagree with him.
But Mary has a way of getting through to Mr. Grant. She’s always knocking on his office door and asking, “Mr. Grant, can I talk to you for a moment?” She doesn’t yell or play up to his ego. Her voice quavers, and she occasionally breaks down crying, but she does manage to stand up to Mr. Grant. In one episode when Mr. Grant tells Mary he’d like her to hire a new receptionist with a nice “caboose,” she’s got the perfect retort: “If that is the case, Mr. Grant, why have I been wasting my time for the last two days screening them for skills? I mean why don’t I just march them in here in bathing suits?” Mr. Grant gives that a moment’s thought. Hmmm. Maybe not a bad idea, you can see him thinking. Then he backs down. Mary called him out. Take that, Mad Men!
It’s hard to believe it, but at the time, this was seen as progressive. In the United States of the 1970s, the office was still a man’s world. So when Mr. Grant asks Mary to fix him a drink, she grumbles, but she does it anyway. At least she grumbles about it! As the seasons pass, Mary extends boundaries as an independent career woman—and learns to push back at her boss and call him out on his sexist behavior.
After Lou’s wife asks for a separation, he heads to the local pub to drown his sorrows with his coworkers, including Mary. He expects sympathy when he complains about his wife’s plan to go back to college. “I’d like to propose a toast to men’s lib. Let’s hang on to what we got,” Lou says.
But Mary isn’t having any of it. “Hold it. I can’t drink to that,” she says. “You invited me so you could hear a woman’s point of view. I have been sitting here like some kind of idiot, acting like I agree with everything you said. But I don’t agree with everything you’ve said. As a matter of fact, I don’t agree with anything you’ve said.” When Lou accuses her of being on “their side,” Mary is furious. “Sides? Oh, Mr. Grant, that is just dumb.” There’s no need for name-calling, but Mary nails it here—and Mr. Grant respects her because of it.
LIFE LESSON:
Be a Force for Good
Though she’s hardly a radical feminist, Mary Richards tries to use her relatively privileged position to help others—and isn’t afraid to speak out when she sees injustice or to stand up for her beliefs. In the third season premiere, Mary takes on the issue of pay equity, which was a hot-button issue at the time (and continues to be). When Mary discovers she makes less money than the man who had her job before her, she confronts Lou, albeit in a quavering voice. “I would like to know why the last associate producer before me made fifty dollars a week more than I do.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Oh, because he was a man.”
She’s flustered and momentarily thrown by his blunt response, but then she tells him, “I’m doing as good a job as he did, and I’m getting paid less than he was.”
Mr. Grant agrees. In fact, he says she’s doing a better job than the guy before her did. Mr. Grant delivers what he thinks is a clever answer: he’s got a family and you don’t.
But Mary’s got an answer for that too. “Mr. Grant, there is no good reason why two people doing the same job at the same place shouldn’t be making the same.” He gives her a raise, though it’s still not as much as the guy who had the job before her got! It doesn’t seem like much, but Mary was at the forefront of change. Compared to her peer group, Mary Richards was doing better than most. In 1970, a newswoman in Mary’s position made just 64 percent of what her male colleagues made—and this was actually a higher gender-pay ratio than in most jobs. The average working woman made only 60 percent as much as the average working man at the time.
Another time, Mary’s job—and her freedom—is on the line when she refuses to divulge the source for a news story about government kickbacks. In the episode “Will Mary Richards Go to Jail?,” Mary Richards does indeed go to jail. Mary, being Mary, makes friends with the prostitutes in her cell. “What are you in here for?” one of them asks. “Imitating a Barbie doll?” When one of her cellmates gets out of jail, Mary even tries to find her legitimate work. Best of all, when she finally goes to court, albeit with a lecherous lawyer who hits on her, the judge dismisses the case and praises Mary as “one of the most charming and competent newsmen that I have ever met.” Go Mary!
In another episode, Mary tries to advance the cause of women in broadcasting (and sports) by hiring a female sportscaster, a former (fictitious) Olympic swimmer, Betty Jean Smathers. “I think I may just have had what could be a truly great idea… Wouldn’t she be fantastic on the news?”
The men in the newsroom don’t think the idea is so fantastic. Ted hates the idea. Murray says, “I am not too thrilled by the idea of having my copy mangled by some dummy in a tank suit.” Mary tells him she expected this sort of response from Ted but not from him. Isn’t he supposed to be the sensitive guy? “I just don’t think we gain anything by sticking some pretty little ninny on the news,” Murray tells her.
She’s not having any of it. “Pretty little ninny?… She’s bright. She’s articulate. She’s a woman! That’s why you’re both against the idea… Well, I’m producer of the news, and I think it’s a good idea. So that’s that.”
Well, not quite. When she tells Mr. Grant the idea, he dismisses it as just a gimmick. “You think it would be cute to have a woman do the sports.” When he calls her idea “dumb,” Mary’s had enough. “The idea of hiring Barbara Jean Smathers to do sports is not dumb. What’s dumb is rejecting the idea because of some stupid prejudice.”
Lou ends up telling her it’s her decision to make. “You are the producer, Mary.” Don’t forget it, Mary! She hires Barbara Jean Smathers as the sportscaster, but it turns out she only wants to report on swimming. Even Mary has to agree she’s awful and fires her. Mr. Grant tells her, “You proved that a woman deserves to be just as lousy at a job as a man.” Well, that’s progress!