TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, episode 8

 Typist-in-Charge, Episode 8, Typing Room 206, Government Buildings, Wellington, NZ, 

I was  concentrating on the typing of a ministerial.  No rub-outs allowed for anything the Minister of Education had to sign (grrrhh, so many retypes).  Ministerials were always 1+9, which meant one original page and 9 carbon copies.  Most of the +9 had individual minutes (messages) to departmental officers typed on them, and the solitary rather carbon-ed out last page had to have everybody's minutes typed there.  On any letterhead job, and via the stencil key, the typist's initials were hidden in the departmental monogram so that an officer knew, through the carbon copies, who to return a job to for amendments.

above:  A true used typing artefact:  one of my actual government-issued rubbers (tee-hee, that's an 'eraser', if you're from the United State). 

 Since most of  Room 305 pool had split to go downstairs to the utmost middle/front of the building, Room 206, and new typists had been added, I had decided to be a good little typist, proof-read my work, and not have as many mistakes.  Or at least show as many mistakes.  Mrs Rowley acknowledged me as the best rubber-outerer of the entire two floors.

There was however one huge typist mistake that I am still berating myself over.  Know this please, gentle reader, that to type four accurate foolscap pages an hour was considered the average.  It had taken me several days to type 68 stencils.  My desk was crammed with stuff (a govt poster on the hallway wall proclaimed "Don't have a mesk!", ie a messy desk) and so I tidily set all my stencils in a stencil box on top of my waste-paper basket.  And ... forgot to retrieve them at day's end.

That evening they were whisked away by the cleaners.  Sometimes we arrived at work to find mice in the bins.  The cleaners were reluctant to empty the bins of mice, so it was up to us to call on Mr Ivers in Records to retrieve the rodents and drown them in the gentlemen's toilets.  How I do wish, as well as mice, the cleaners had been turned off by my typed stencils.

Here I was, without my typing...

And ...  I never typed so hard in my life to get those stencils re-done by the original end-of-that-afternoon deadline.  I swear my fingers turned stubby.  I worked through lunch-hour and tea-breaks, and didn't natter to anyone, severely doubting I would finish in time.  But I did do it, finishing 68 stencils with 7 minutes to spare before sign-off  time at 4.35 pm.  There were a few mistakes that came back to me the next day, but most of the alterations were because the officer had changed his mind about whole paragraphs which meant that some pages had to be done again to re-figure the entire job (elongating or shrinking margins, less or more words per line, lowering or raising top or bottom lines or where the page number sat on the page) ...

...  Francie called out, "Hey, who's got the Bijou Gothic - ?"  She needed the small print typewriter for a 10 page job that consisted of many columns to fit sideways on a foolscap page.

Mrs Rowley said, "The Bijou Gothic is up in 305."  She pointed to a corner of the room.  "Trolley's over there."

Francie wrangled the trolley out of the room and over to the lift ... 

I wasn't sent relieving so much nowadays.  But there had been a bit of a blip when I decreed I wanted to stay at School Publications in Willis Street, never to return to the pool.  I liked working at School Pubs, from where they edited The School Journal.  There was one other typist.  And the editors were fun.  Poet James K Baxter had worked there; whenever he'd got in a row with his wife, he'd slept in the old house's bathtub. One editor, regardless of chastisements over public servants not being allowed to take part in protest marches, was not only a marcher, but usually helped carry the banner in the very front marching row.  Another one, wanting a late morning lie-in, put on his vacuum cleaner to simulate the background noise of printing presses.  He rang into the department and shouted he'd be in later because he was at the Government Printer. 

But I missed 'the girls' and the pool.  I'd come straight from school and knew nothing else but a typing pool environment.  With a bit of a sigh, Mrs Rowley welcomed me back.

We had carted down, from Room 305, the pool's bunch of Christmas decorations.  Mrs Rowley allowed us time to put them up in this much bigger room.  Racing out to McKenzies chain store on Lambton Quay, we bought more crepe paper, and twisted it into garlands and hangings.  Mrs Rowley was so nice, she let new typists outside to see openings of Parliament, royal passers-through, Prime Minister's  funeral.

All Education typists and secretaries, both inside Govt Bldgs and in any of the outlying areas, were invited to the annual typists' Christmas morning tea -  

Franci is in the foreground.  She'd let someone else use her brand-new camera to take these slides!  Val is behind Franci.