By Mary Jo Frank
Efficient, yet patient and kind. The type of person you hope will answer the phone when you call your doctor’s office.
The description fits Marty Davis-Merritts, research secretary in the Medical School’s Simpson Memorial Institute.
Not surprisingly, patient contact is her favorite part of the job, says Davis-Merritts, who has worked in her current position for two and one-half years.
Davis-Merritts’ duties include screening patient calls for Barbara L. Weber, assistant professor of internal medicine, whose research focuses on breast cancer; processing research grants and clinical protocols; handling conference travel arrangements for faculty and staff in the Division of Hematology and Oncology; and updating the office’s weekly bulletin board.
She recalls the difficulty she had landing her first job after graduating with a degree in international trade from Eastern Michigan University (EMU) in 1987. Davis-Merritts says she would be called for interviews in response to her resume but nothing came from those interviews.
She suspected the unsuccessful job search was due to her short stature but could never pinpoint overt discrimination. “It is sometimes such a subconscious thing that people aren’t aware of it themselves,” says Davis-Merritts, who is 3 feet 8 inches tall.
“I decided to try temporary work. I knew if I had an opportunity to show what I could do that I would be hired,” Davis-Merritts explains.
She worked as a temporary for six weeks and landed the job when her predecessor decided not to return.
Noting that some people with disabilities worry about asking potential employers for accommodations, Davis-Merritts has found “the University community is willing and able to make accommodations.”
For her, those accommodations amounted to only a small step-stool and a portable kick-stool so she can reach file cabinets, the bulletin board and the copy machine.
Davis-Merritts also uses a telephone headset, a neck-saving device she thinks would improve the work environment for many secretaries who answer large numbers of telephone calls each day.
Davis-Merritts, who has had her car modified so she can drive to work, lives in an apartment with normal-height counters and appliances. She uses a step stool at home, too.
“I don’t mind the term ‘dwarf,’” says Davis-Merritts, who finds the term “little people” demeaning. “When people see ‘small,’ they think not capable. Attaching the term ‘little people’ to a condition like mine augments that tendency.”
In her spare time Davis-Merritts is an alumni adviser to EMU’s coeducation service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. She and her husband, Scott, who is 6-feet tall, met through the fraternity.
