MRS. BROWN. What work do you do, Miss Slavinsky?
SOPHIE. I am an usheress.
MRS. BROWN. A what?
SOPHIE. An usheress, a lady usher at the theatre. And I have to work, oh, so hard, every night and matinées on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
MRS. BROWN. It must be very nice to see all the plays without paying anything.
SOPHIE. One can’t see much when one has to show stupid men and women to their seats all through the first act. People should not be allowed to come in after the curtain goes up. Then, too, we have the same play for so long. A run they call it. It is more like a walk, it is so slow. Now at the opera, they change every night, but the men have it all their own way there. They won’t have an usheress, but we will stop that monopoly soon. We have just organized a union, and we shall demand equal pay as the men. Now they try to put us off on half pay because we are women.
MILDRED. I think there is a prejudice against women ushers in New York. I don’t see why, they have them at all the theatres in London.
MR. VAN TOUSEL. And very neat and pretty they look in their white caps and aprons.
SOPHIE. There is certainly a sex discrimination! Why, a man the other night said to me, “You women are all alike. You never get a thing straight.” Just because I was looking so hard at a woman’s bird of paradise head-dress that I gave her the man’s seat in the third row, and when he came in after, I gave him the lady’s seat in the thirteenth. He threatened to complain of me to the box-office—as if men ushers never made mistakes!