Typist-in-Charge, Typing Room, Customs Department Head Office, PSIS Building, Whitmore Street, Wellington
Whaaaaat???!!!!
I had arrived as the new Typist-in-Charge at Customs. But within two minutes of my admin boss walking back out through the typing pool door, Mavis was confronting me with a we-don't-want-you-in-the-pool-leave-now-but-no-hard-feelings speech.
Apparently Senior Typist, Edith - who hadn't as yet said a word to me - should have my job. Edith had been doing the in-charge job for a month before my arrival. The dozen girls in the pool knew Edith well. They wanted Edith. Edith was their comfort zone, their security blanket.
No-one said a word. Everyone looked over to me. Me, sitting in the typist-in-charge seat. Me, lording it behind the typist-in-charge desk I was such a pesky annoyance. And if (obviously power-behind-the-throne) Mavis had her way, I would be out, Edith in.
My mind swept back to the various supervisor seminars the bosses had sent me to over the years: I had to keep my cool.... Oh, no. Me, keeping my cool? Me?
Um...
I kept my voice low, tried to gently point out to the typists how sorry I was about the circumstances, that the in-charge position was such-and-such grade and I'd worked my way through various grades to get to it. And that Edith, as a senior typist, was quite a few grades beneath this position's level.
They didn't care a jot, most everyone chipped in. They wanted me gone. They wanted Edith, full stop.
The back and forth went on for about half-an-hour. Do not lose my temper... Do not lose my temper .. Do not lose my temper .. Or, more importantly: Do not start crying .... Do not start crying ... Do not start crying ...
Never before have I had to bury my true feelings to such a deep recess of my mind. I was shaking inwardly, I wanted to run from these inquisitors. Heck, as the moaning went on... and on... I wanted to jump on the desk - it looked strong enough to hold me - and scream out for this pack of wolves to bloody well put up with me, or get out!
Well, when I figured the pack had reached some level of exhaustion, I turned to my right. "Edith," I said, with what I hoped was a calming voice. "Could you run me through the work for today please." I ignored Mavis.
The typists returned to their work too. It became like any other typing pool I had been in, with the low click-clack keystrokes of basic electric typewriters being the only sound.
But I could feel the tension underlying everything.
My in-pool job was to check all finished work that the typists placed on my desk before it was sent out to Customs officers. I read through the typing, marking mistakes, and putting the good work into the 'Out' tray to be picked up over the course of the day. If the job had been marked 'urgent', I would ring up the writer for collection. The phone on my desk was the only phone in this room of 13 people.
I spotted the under-the-eyelashes stares, and surreptitious side-eye glances reaching me from all corners. Mavis was click-clacking on the room's only IBM Golfball, like her fingers were on fire. This over fifty-year-old woman was obviously the fastest in the room. And, as it turned out, the most accurate. She had only returned to the work force over the last few years and as she proudly pointed out to me at a later date, ".. because I wanted something to do, not because my husband and I need the money."
above: 2025 photo. Customs building, also known as PSIS (Public Service Investment Society) Building.
That afternoon, Edith came to me, clutching a sheaf of papers. "We have to tot up these figures weekly," she explained.
Uh-oh, I recognised them: Time and Motion forms where typists had to mark out how many jobs they did per day. We'd had them years ago at Education, as had every govt department. Because they proved to be so impractical (see earlier chapter), they had been abandoned. I had never been in a position before to follow all the mathematics involved with the finalisation of the process, Oh, Mrs Rowley, why aren't you here when I need you?
Never-ever-even-on-my-deathbed-would-I-have-divulged-my-secret, let alone to anyone at Customs, but I had been diagnosed with Dyscalculia. This meant I had trouble understanding anything to do with numbers. When a shopkeeper counted out change into my hand, I tried to look intelligent. I could count to 10 on my fingers but pound notes, inches, feet came in twelves, so that sank me. If I wanted to find out the total of 50 x 20 I would have to twenty times write down the figure '50' on a sheet of paper and add it up that way, and on my fingers. I couldnt understand times-tables, or do long-division. Fractions killed me - how on earth could one-third be more than one-quarter? Whenever a number was in front of me or I was required to add up anything mentally, my mind started to jumble around until my brain turned into a big black NOTHING!
Because of my non-arithmetic skills I was held back a year when I reached Standard 1, at about age 6, and this was after skipping primer 4 where sums weren't even an issue. All through my school days I was bottom of every maths class. Way, way down the bottom. Dyslexia was not understood in those days, so why on earth would dyscalculia be an issue?
Sitting school typing tests, and later Public Service Typing Exams, and Trades Certification Board typng papers, I couldn't add up the money columns in confused manuscripts - which had usually been purposely totalled up wrong - so I just made up any total. Better to lose one point for that mistake than spend half the exam time trying to work out the problem.
So......? Here I was, Edith by my side, in the Customs Department typing pool and trying to make sense over her explaining to me about the involvement of long division, and multiplications, and moving this figure over here, and that one over there, and don't forget this number, and how many typists had put this, and had they really meant this.....?
".....and once you've found out how many hours the typists have worked over the week, and the stuff that goes with it, you're all done," said Edith.
Oh.
Edith had done the job for me this week, it had taken her over half an hour. But what about next week? And the week after that? My future?
'Thanks, Edith." I beamed." Looks good. ". No. the situation looked bad.
'Oh, Edith," sing-songed Mavis from my other side. "Don't forget to tell Lorraine to take the results upstairs- "
... to the Director of Administration.
I knocked on his open door and stepped into the room -
"Hi, everything going okay?" he asked.
"Fine. I've brought you the time and motion results for the past week."
"Good. Good." He absently tossed them aside.
"Um...?" I hesitated. "Every other department got rid of those results several years ago."
"They did?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Okay." He threw the result page into his waste basket. "Anything else?"
No. Nothing. Nothing at all -
Back in the typing pool, I announced , "I got rid of the time and motion business. We don't have to fill out the forms anymore."
Silence.
Then -
Whoops and happy shrieks rang throughout the room. Mavis and Edith were smiling. Even a Customs officer who had been standing over a frazzzled typist as she finished his ministerial - a big no-no - appeared to understand the pool's enthusiasm. He applauded.
Mavis said, "Well, thank goodness for that.."
And so ended my first day at Customs Head Office. It haunted me for years.
*****
2025: At my senior improv group, we were asked to do a short piece about a day that we had spent at work that affected us. I chose the above story, dyscalculia and all. During the last part where I had happily raced back to the pool with the decision, we improv typists broke out into the can-can dance, singing and laughing. And you know what? - I got my closure.
