Building history

1355 Odenton Road 1930's and present

This article appears in Heritage Times, the news journal of the Odenton Heritage Society, Summer 2016. The issue is about Odenton businesses throughout the town's history. Thought you would enjoy reading about how one building has served the shopping needs of the community for over 100 years. The article is lengthy and will be presented in two blog posts.

Please help preserve the history of your local communities. As time passes and development increases we are losing the treasures of our past. This includes our oral history. Your community elders are a wealth of information. Take the time to ask and listen. Enjoy the article.

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A History of 1355 Odenton Road
By Gregory Mazzella
Part 1

The large plate glass windows filled with merchandise and the lighted OPEN sign let you know there is a business in the building. Walking through the front door of 1355 Odenton Road you can feel the history. The large, open front room, the tall ceilings. The upper floors and basement accessed via narrow stairwells. In the basement is where the age of the building is exposed as this area is mostly as it has been for a century. You’ll find that the ceiling is low. Brick walls form the foundation and heavy wooden beams support the floors above. Look around the main floor and you can imagine the setup of merchants past. Long counters with display cases, jars of penny candy, shelves filled with merchandise.  The building was constructed between 1910 and 1920. Throughout it’s history the building has consistently housed mercantile establishments since it’s construction. Whether general stores or home goods this building has served the Odenton community for a century and continues to do so.

            By the second decade of the 20^th century, Odenton had been a successful hub of rail transportation for more than forty years. Odenton was still a rural area and mostly farmland and fields. However, industry, hotels, and stores had sprung up near the Odenton train station and Academy Junction. Roads were dirt and horses were still the main source of local transportation. The future intersection of Piney Orchard Parkway and Odenton Road, while not congested with automobiles, was still a bustling area for the time.  At the time, the intersection did not exist as we know it today. Where Piney Orchard Parkway now runs, a train trestle crossed over Odenton Road to allow trains to run north and south without interference. To the west was the rail station for the Baltimore and Potomac/Annapolis and Elkridge Railroad junction. To the north, Academy Junction, where the Annapolis & Elkridge Railroad and Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis electric railway met. You can imagine lots of foot traffic, horse carts, people waiting for their trains and connections, politicians traveling to and from Annapolis and Washington. D.C., farmers bringing in their harvest for shipment. And let’s not forget about Camp Meade, which was formed in 1917, providing an influx of soldiers to the community. You can see why the area, that particular junction, was a hub for the region. You can see why a young entrepreneur would choose the area for his business.

Taudte’s

            Henry Taudte lived in Baltimore and maintained a store in Severn, Maryland. His parents were German immigrants and operated a bakery in Baltimore. He met and married Severn resident Bessie Durner in 1906. In 1915, the Taudte’s moved to Odenton and opened a general store at 1355 Odenton Road where they lived while also maintaining the Severn store. According the U.S. Census for 1910, Henry Tandte [sic] was born in Maryland in 1877 and lived in the fourth election district, which would have included Odenton. The census has Henry listed as married to Bessie, with a two year old son, James. There was no record for Henry in the 1900 census.

It is not known if Henry built the building that would be their home and business or if the structure already existed. We are still researching the original construction. Research of land records has provided a deed dated October 29, 1917, in which Henry and Bessie Taudte purchased from John and May Watts lots 1, 2, and 3 of John Watts plat of Odenton. The deed does mention, “ together with the buildings and improvements”. It is not yet known if this verbiage construes that the building already existed or if it is boilerplate language.

From the Taudte’s daughter in law, Mildred, we know that the building itself originally consisted of two floors and a basement. The upper floors had bedrooms. The right side of the first floor had the living room, dining room and kitchen. The store was located on the left side of the first floor. You can still see that original layout, as the floor plan has not changed. The long counter, that every general store seemed to have, was on the left side as you entered the store. Named for the owner, Taudte’s store was of the general store model. They sold meats, dry goods-like sugar and flour, groceries, cloth, candy, and general merchandise. In addition to the people living near the store, the customers consisted of farmers and residents of Camp Meade. Even competition with the general store housed in the Murray Hotel just down the road.

Henry died on December 17, 1921. Bessie continued to operate both stores through the 1920”s with the help of her parents, James and Laura Durner. Bessie married Wilfred Boyer in 1925. The 1930 U.S. Census lists Bessie as being married to Wilfred Boyer. There is no 1930 census record for Henry Taudte, which corroborates the story that he more than likely died in the early 1920’s.

Bessie began operating rental homes along Watts Avenue [Now Becknel]. Again, we do not know if the Taudte’s built the homes or purchased existing properties. After she remarried, Bessie closed both the Severn and Odenton stores, moving with Wilfred Boyer to Baltimore.

The Taudte’s granddaughter, Tempie, who is the daughter of James and Mildred Taudte did not live in the area when she was younger and did not have much interaction with her grandparents having moved to Sarasota, Fl when she was 13. Tempie does recall that when her family visited she would help her grandmother, Bessie, collect rent from the renters of the houses next to the store.

One of those renters was the family of Suzanne Hackman. Ms. Hackman’s family moved to Odenton from Fort Eustis, Va in 1933 when her father was transferred to Camp Meade. She was ten years old at the time and remembers living in several of what she called “Taudte” houses. She doesn’t remember whom but does remember someone would collect the $10 rent from her mother every month. The Taudte’s managed several rentals and Ms. Hackman’s family moved often as better accommodations became available.

During the time Ms. Hackman lived in the Taudte houses the Brodsky’s had purchased the store. Although they did most of their shopping at the Camp Meade PX her mother would send her to Brodsky’s to get items like meat and bread. She remembered bread being ten cents a loaf and hamburger meat twenty-five cents a pound. Of course, being ten years old at the time, her biggest memory was the big glass candy case.

Rieve’s

            Another, still operating, Odenton store is Rieve’s. Rieve’s store has been an Odenton landmark since the 1920’s. We bring that store into the mix because for a short time Rieve’s also operated out of the 1355 Odenton Road location. Rieve’s operated in a building originally located just north of Academy Junction until a fire destroyed the building on unknown date in 1928 or 1929. Werner J. Rieve wrote in the Heritage Times, June 2000, “At about the same time of the fire, the Taudte building became available, and my father set up his store business there. This is the building that later became Brodsky's store and the place where my father maintained his grocery business until the early 1930s . . . Originally, I believe my father wanted to keep his place of business at the old Taudte/Brodsky (later Marucha) location… with the family expanding, the living quarters were much too small.”

In his article, Mr. Rieve also gave us a glimpse into how the area looked when the Rieve’s store first opened along Telegraph Road (Piney Orchard Parkway). He wrote that the WB&A was still very much in operation and the paved surface of Telegraph Road was nonexistent. So we have an idea of how the Odenton area looked in the 1930’s as 1355 Odenton Road was taken over by another merchant. From what is known, it is believed that 1355 Odenton road was sold to Louis Brodsky, approximately 1931.

Part 2 to follow in separate post
Building history, Part 2

To learn more about Odenton and become involved in local history please visit the Odenton Heritage Society.

Social media checks

Background checks use to be associated with financial institutions during applications for loans. Now they are performed during job applications, college admissions, even dating sites. One of the most important parts of the background check is the character reference. References were historically performed by field investigators interviewing the person’s friends, neighbors, associates, coworkers, etc. This is still an integral part of checking someone’s references, but in today’s online all the time society, social media is fast becoming the standard.

Who’s looking?

Private employers are. Social media checks are now on the checklist during candidate research. HR hiring surveys estimate that more than half of employers search an applicant’s social media during the hiring process. The New York Post reported on January 29, 2016, that at least 40% of college admissions officers report they check applicants’ Facebook pages and other social media when weighing who should get accepted. A third say they Google applicants. Even professional sport franchises do their due diligence when deciding on draft picks. As part of the vetting process, social media of potential draftees are reviewed. With the media attention on football players gone wild in recent years, franchises are doing every thing they can to determine the character of the player they are drafting.

Now the federal government is getting into the game. Investigators will now be probing social media as part of background checks for security clearances. Seems far-fetched that federal investigators didn’t perform these checks in the past, but now it’s official. On May 13, 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper signed a policy directive that allows investigators to collect publicly available social media information pertaining to the person whose background is being investigated. In a press release, Bill Evanina, Director of ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center stated, “We cannot afford to ignore this important open source in our effort to safeguard our secrets—and our nation’s security.” While federal investigators are prohibited from requiring or requesting applicants’ password information, they will be searching for publically accessible accounts.

Privacy concerns

States and the Federal government have responded in a challenging effort to protect citizens’ privacy and rights. Twenty-three states have enacted laws that prevent employers from requesting passwords to personal accounts to either apply for or keep a job. Maryland was the first state to enact such a law, which took effect on October 1, 2012. Maryland’s law states that employers may not require employees or applicants to disclose a user name, password or other means of accessing a private Internet site or electronic account.

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regulate, monitor, and enforce employer misuse of social media during the hiring process. Since 2010, the NLRB has heard dozens of cases regarding employers infringing on employee rights through social media. Both the EEOC and the NLRB have issued guidance to employers regarding social media rights of employees.

Does your mother see your posts?

Whether you’re currently looking for job or suddenly need a clearance, you never know when a situation will surface that requires a background check, which will now more than likely include social media checks. As we are seeing, the trend is spreading beyond dating sites to employers, college admissions, pretty much anyone who wants to know more about who you are. A picture truly is worth a thousand words.

Getting a lot of ambiguous rejections? Check your social media posts.

Even social media posts from years ago can haunt you. During the 2016 NFL draft, a potential first round pick had his Twitter account hacked.  A years old video showing him allegedly smoking marijuana with a bong hit the web. As this sorted out, draft round after round passed. He eventually was chosen in the thirteenth round, costing him millions.

Because of the anonymity of the Internet, the narcissist in us all, and the instantaneous culture we have, social media seems to be a window into our daily lives. Not only what cat videos we find hilarious or what we’re eating and where, but social media goes a long way in determining who we are, the character of the person doing the posts. Now one could argue that it’s not how they really are, that they use social media as an alter ego. But over time, patterns do develop and the onus appears to be on the account holder to justify the veracity of their posts and not the reviewer.

A good rule of thumb is-If you wouldn’t want your mother to see it, then don’t post it.

See our blog archive for other posts relating to social media:

What’s your social media policy? March 22, 2016

Enforcing company policy May 8, 2015

Convicted? Never convicted. October 17, 2014

Southern hospitality

Whenever we travel to the southwest part of Virginia, we are always amazed at the friendliness and hospitality encountered from employees at almost all businesses.

This was even more evident on a recent trip to Charlottesville. Shopping at an antique store in Ruckersville we had a nice conversation with the cashier. As expected, he was polite and friendly. We learned that he knew a little about where we were from in Maryland and even had some connections to the area. Telling him about our weekend plans he graciously made some suggestions on what we should do and see on the way to Charlottesville. He told us about an alternative route that had more antique stores, vineyards, restaurants, and an overall nice road for scenery. He asked about our tastes and suggested the stores and restaurants we may enjoy visiting.

The suggestions did not disappoint. At each location we stopped we told them how our original “guide” told us about their business. They in turn suggested other businesses we would enjoy visiting. All of these were a few miles apart and it wasn’t apparent that they had any relation to each other-Just businesses helping each other.

It’s easy to forget about the golden rule sometimes, especially in the impersonal world of business. It was such a pleasure to be a stranger and greeted with such hospitality. But to see individual businesses, some that would be competitors, freely offering suggestions to travelers was a refreshing surprise. We never would have had this experience had we continued on the main highway, missing this little detour. Now it is go to route to Charlottesville.

The hospitality didn’t end en route but continued once we arrived in Charlottesville. We love the pedestrian mall on Main Street. Parking isn’t hard to find but can be tricky with restrictions and meters. Finding a pay lot with no meters and no one in the pay booth, it was difficult to discern the process from the posted signs, as they directed you to pay at the booth. Not wanting to get a hefty ticket or worse, towed, we must have looked a little bewildered. A gentleman leaving the lot noticed us, pulled up, and rolled down his window. He immediately recognized our problem and told us that after a certain hour the booth is closed and there was no reason to pay. But just in case, he gave us a business card and told us that we could use him as a reference since he worked in the adjacent building. We thanked him and he drove off.  We parked. Enjoyed Main Street. And returned to an unflagged car.

Southern hospitality exemplified.

Overtime history

Last week there was a lot of news about the Department of Labor raising the salary threshold. Here’s a brief history of overtime pay.

Overtime or time and a half began with the Fair Labor and Standards Act of 1938. The FLSA established the eight hour a day/forty hours a week work standard, a national minimum wage, restricted employment of minors, and guaranteed time and a half pay for work over forty hours. Overtime pay was initially looked upon as a fine for employers and not a bonus for workers. 

Salaried or white collar workers (executive, administrative, professional) have been neglected overtime more so than hourly workers as employers can designate who is exempt from overtime by assigning “managerial” titles or paying a salary slightly above the established threshold. Since 1940, the Department of Labor regulations have required three tests to establish exemption from overtime under the FLSA- (1) the employee must be paid a predetermined and fixed salary that is not subject to reduction because of variations in the work performed (2) the salary paid must meet a minimum specified amount (3) the employee’s job duties must primarily involve executive, administrative, or professional duties. Any employee below the salary threshold and not meeting the test requirements is eligible to be paid overtime.

The current standard for eligibility dates to the 1950’s. If an employee’s job duties or salary fell below the standard then they were eligible for overtime. The Department of Labor has the power to define who is eligible through the FLSA. Since the passing of the FLSA, the Department of Labor has changed the definition six times. The minimum salary threshold for overtime by salaried workers was last changed by the Department of Labor in 2004 when it was raised to $23,660 annually. The previous adjustment was 1975.

On May 18, 2016, the Department of Labor announced new overtime rules and threshold that will take effect December 1, 2016. The new rule focuses on updating salary compensation for employees designated executive, administrative and professional. The threshold for overtime pay was raised to $47,476 annually or $913 per week.

Workplace monitoring

 The messaging software company Slack is working on software that will install manager bots to monitor employee production. The bots will be plugged into company networks to monitor an employee’s work. The bots will ask for updates, check employees work status, and even ask what tasks are currently being worked. Managers won’t have to roam the cube farms to keep everyone on point. The bots will do it.

Does this help or hurt employee morale and productivity? Do companies that are constantly looking over employee shoulders getting the results they want?

Many in the workforce have been exposed to a micro manager. Constantly overlooking every detail of an employee’s work. Workers usually respond with frustration or task-to-task completion without innovation. Doing only what has to be done to satisfy the manager, waiting to be told what to do next. The last decade has seen the use of technology to replace that micro manager.

Long before the idea of manager bots technology enabled companies to monitor almost every aspect of a worker’s day. Most, if not all, companies that have computer networks monitor employee email traffic and Internet use. Some even capture keystrokes and keyboard activity, such as how long a keyboard has been inactive. Software enables managers to monitor telecommuters-are they actively working or just logged in to the network? Companies that utilize vehicles track employees through GPS, recording location and length of stay. Hospitals track nurses through the use of sensors embedded to monitor their location and patient visits. And let’s not forget about cameras. With or without using a computer, workers are constantly tracked. How the use of monitoring occurs and is communicated to workers can have varied results.

Hawthorne Effect

Workers who are knowingly being observed tend to be more productive due to what has been called the Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect is used to describe the tendency of observed employees to work harder due to the attention they are receiving from researchers rather than because of individual work habits.

The Hawthorne Effect is named for the location where worker productivity experiments took place in the 1920’s and 1930’s, Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works near Hawthorne, Illinois. The electric company had commissioned research to determine if there was a relationship between productivity and the work environment. The focus of the studies was to determine if increasing or decreasing the amount of light that workers received would have an effect on worker productivity. Employee productivity seemed to increase due to the changes but then decreased after the experiment was over. Researchers suggested that productivity increased due to attention from the research team and not because of changes in the experimental variables.

Transparency Trap

Ethan Bernstein, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School has extensively researched employee monitoring. Bernstein believes that it is difficult for employees to be at their best when they know they are being watched and evaluated at every moment. Bernstein wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “Wide open workspaces and copious real time data on how individuals spend their time can leave employees feeling exposed and vulnerable.” For his paper, The Transparency Trap, Bernstein conducted several experiments to help prove his theory. In one, Bernstein embedded five Chinese born Harvard undergraduate researchers into the lines of the world's second largest mobile phone factory in China. Controls were added to allow for the Hawthorne Effect.

This particular experiment showed that employees acted and behaved differently when they were being watched. Basically, observed employees followed the policies of the company to the letter while unobserved employees did not. Unobserved employees innovated ways to make their tasks easier, tending to hide process improvements from managers. Two examples were scanning multiple bar codes at once instead of one at time as per policy and crossed trained themselves on breaks. The intent was to improve the process without having the inefficiency of explaining their actions to managers.

Overall, those shielded from observation were more productive than the observed. Experimentation, shared problem solving, and focus flourished.

Communication

There are many examples of employee monitoring. Done improperly, with poor communication to employees may cause resentment and a feeling of “Big Brother” is watching. Letting workers know that data is being collected to improve efficiency may alleviate skewed results. UPS has saved millions and improved their schedules by collecting delivery data and providing the analysis back to drivers. You may have heard of how UPS routes were made more efficient by reducing left turns.

Letting employees know that monitoring is taking place, how the data is being used, and how that will improve their workday goes a long way is establishing trust between employer and employee.

Will employees do their best when being observed? Or are they so hindered by the constant oversight that they do the minimum required. If left to themselves would they perform better, working more efficiently with less fear of messing up and being corrected by managers?

These questions that are still being studied. From what is known, it seems that communication between management and the workforce about the use of technology to monitor productivity is a key factor for improvement. Technology will always continue to improve. Innovators will figure out how to apply technology to the workplace. But while people are still involved they need to be kept in the loop.

Health history discrimination

What an employer asks on employment applications regarding criminal history and how it is used, has long been scrutinized by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In recent years when an employer asks about criminal history has been at issue (Should the box be banned, February 4, 2013). Employers are also getting caught on health history questions, although the EEOC has been monitoring that form of discrimination for over twenty years.

EEOC and ADA

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII, made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The EEOC was created in 1965 to enforce the Civil Rights Act but had to authority. In 1972, Congress gave the EEOC litigation enforcement authority. The American with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 and the EEOC was given enforcement authority over Title I of the Act, which includes the employment discrimination provisions. The ADA places restrictions on employers regarding asking job applicants to answer medical questions.

EEOC v. Grisham Farm Products, Inc.

In a recent case the EEOC, on March 22, 2016, filed suit in the United States District Court against Grisham Farm Products, Inc. alleging that its employment application violated the ADA. (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Grisham Farm Products, Inc. 16-cv-03105)

In the case, an applicant applied for a warehouse position at Grisham. The Grisham job application contained forty-three “yes or no” health related questions. The questions were similar to what would be seen on an initial doctor visit. The Grisham application inquired whether in the past ten years the applicant has had allergies, arthritis, bladder infections, eating disorders, gallstones, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. The application also inquired about prior hospitalizations, HIV infection, treatment for alcoholism, and whether the applicant consulted a doctor, chiropractor, therapist, or other health care provider in the past two years.

The application’s Health History section stated in large letters, “All questions must be answered before we can process your application”. The applicant did not answer all of the questions and telephoned Grisham Farm. A company representative said that if the health history section was not fully completed, it would not be accepted.

The EEOC claims that the applicant believed he did not have to reveal his medical history to any potential employer. The case is still in litigation.

Review your hiring process

Employers should be frequently reviewing their hiring process. They also need to follow EEOC decisions as these decisions occur frequently and affect the hiring process. As with questions regarding criminal history, there are parameters as to what health questions can be asked and when they can be asked. The EEOC is clear that pre-employment health inquiries can be made only after a conditional offer has been made, if the inquiries are made to all applicants for that job category, and the inquiries are job related and consistent with a business necessity.



May 9, 2016-The EEOC released it's latest guidance on leave as a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act

Maryland-Paid Sick Leave Act

The 2016 Maryland General Assembly did not enact a new workplace law regarding sick leave.  The Maryland Paid Sick leave Act returned to the General Assembly this year and again failed. 

The act would have required businesses with fifteen or more employees to allow workers to earn one hour of sick leave for every thirty hours worked, up to a minimum of five days per year. Businesses with less than fifteen employees would have been required to offer the same amount of unpaid sick leave.

Four states currently have laws requiring paid sick leave for employees-Connecticut, California, Massachusetts, and Oregon.

We’re writing about an act that didn’t happen because this issue was addressed in the 2015 session as well. Be sure that it will be back in 2017.

A proposal by the Governor to reduce business filing fees was also defeated.