Hi there
Supervising Typist, First Floor, Education Head Office, Government Buildings, Wellington, 1977
When a newcomer joined the govt, Probation Report time came round after a year. After 2 years, the typist was off probation and ready for her yearly Personal Report, as were all workers in the govt.
Mrs Rowley, the top-graded supervising typist of all Head Office pools, asked various bosses who sent their work into our rooms what they thought of the service. She and Miss McNeil, the (supremo) Supervising-Typist-in-Charge worked on the reports together. A report was all about what a boss thought of a minion's-sorry-employee's initiative, judgement, accuracy, supervision, etc. There was also a box for Mrs Rowley to give a rating out of 10.
I got a 9!! I was so excited. I'd never had a 9. No typist ever in the history of Education typing had ever got a 10 (please wait with bated breath for Episode 19 where there will be a blow-up over this rating!!)
At the bottom of the form were the words "Your Job Aspirations?" I had always put "Higher Graded Position".
So, enclosed in that full glow of being a 9, I worked even harder to cement my supervising typist position. I became a work-horse of the highest degree. I typed my fingers almost to the bone, I raced through a job with accuracy and speed... Oh, and as a side note, here's a trick question that was asked at interviews, "What is more important: accuracy or speed?" Most interviewees proudly said "Accuracy" and it was then pointed out that accuracy and speed together were important. Oops.
I hated working on Saturdays to get the pool's work-pile down, especially when the hand-writing of the officers couldn't be read and there was no-one around to ask. I often volunteered to work solo (whatever happened to teamwork?) because I knew that I was both accurate and speedy. and could work non-stop without the disturbance of pool chatter and stopping for cups of tea, and ringing up boyfriends on the one phone that the pool had. Most letters and jobs to be typed were clipped to a huge file containing everything to do with the subject in question and, yes, sometimes, it was fun to read back through the files. When the bosses arrived at work on Mondays, one couldn't see the work desk for all the typing.
An officer who sort of cruised through his job had the 'girls' in the pool coming up with theories and ideas about him. He was in Administration, just across the corridor and, unlike us with our window vista of the wooden Annex at the back of Govt Bldgs he was under the big outside clock with a great view of the Cenotaph, Lambton Quay and Parliament Buildings. This older guy was sort of the Admin run-around. He drove Head Office's one car. If an officer wanted to go to the airport or around town, he would ring Admin, book in a time and this guy would take him to his destination. I remember once seeing Mr Pinder, a director, racing down the hallways, yelling back to his secretary to ring the airport and tell them he was on his way. He rarely remembered to tell his secretary that he was leaving the building. The only way she could figure it out, was if his hat was no longer hanging from the hat-stand.
One day, our junior Helen came tearing breathlessly into the pool, "Guess what?"
"Your boyfriend has a secret girlfriend?" Maureen asked dryly.
"Of course not! It's that guy in Admin. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk. And there was a bottle of...whisky!"
No??? What gossip...
Mind you, it wasn't that much of a surprise because he often smelt of beer.
While all the usual shennanigans were going on in the typist areas, I was studying Pitmanscript. I had realised over the years that I would never be able to advance higher if I didn't have a shorthand qualification. For some silly reason the higher supervising typist positions were for shorthand-typists. Silly, because supervising typists never went to take shorthand, leaving it to a pool minion instead. It was better that they stayed in the pool to supervise. And type.
Shorthand-typists were thin on the ground. Schools were finding it hard to get teachers of the subject and women attending business colleges, like Gilby's, didn't want to learn regular shorthand. It took too long and was too finnicky with it's accuracy. In exams, pupils were marked wrong if they so much as slipped up on the slightest little penciled line.
So, in obvious panic because no-one was learning Pitman shorthand anymore, Pitman came up with Pitmanscript. It was half-english.
I did a Pitmanscript course over six Saturdays at a local college. At the end I triumphed with a 60 wpm certificate from the school. However, that 60 wpm equated to words the equivalent of 'the cat sat on the mat'. In real-life, if trying to take more complicated dictation from a boss, it would be like I was writing about 20 wpm. I wouldn't keep up. Pitmanscript could never be as fast as regular Pitmans Shorthand.
So I studied further. I brought my "Pitmanscript 500 most common words in the english language" to work and practised going over them again and again every morning and afternoon tea-time until I could all but Pitmanscript the words in my sleep. As I passed shop awnings on the bus ride home, I mentally pitmanscripted the names of shops. When the teenage music programme "Ready to Roll" came on Saturday evening tv, I frantically Pitmanscrpted the words to songs.
I practised an hour every night in front of my text books and my cassette recorder (sorry I wiped you off the tape, Elvis). I read out loud the long texts from my advanced exercise book - eyes focussed on my watch, to get the words evenly spaced to the minute - then played the texts back as I furiously tried to keep up. Once I finished the book, I started again, at a higher speed.
I sat the Trades Certification Board Shorthand-Typing Exam, 80 Words Per Minute. The piece the teacher read out from had the word "Monarchy" in the title. I couldn't figure out how to Pitmanscript that word. I hesitated too long. After that, all was lost. I scrawled everything else, missing out on so many sentences.
I failed the exam. I had sat it at a regular college, alongside fifth form girls. My fault that I failed, nothing really to do with the reader (though instead of reading the whole thing at the same speed as she was supposed to do, she tended to read phrases rather fast. Maybe because the kids in the class were used to the shortened phrases of regular Pitmans Shorthand, so she was helping them out. No-no-no, I'm not bitter...)
above: the department gave the above notebook to all sitters of School Certificate Shorthand. We had loads in the department....
Noone at the office knew I'd sat the exam, thank goodness, what with me being a supervising typist and all. I vowed to sit again the following year. I figured that my writing size was too big. I wasn't getting that many words on a line, thus losing time. And with it being Pitmanscript, I was allowed to make up anything I wanted to in order to speed everything up, unlike Pitmans Shorthand where every stroke had to be perfect or there would be a fail. So ...I came up with a few symbols to get me faster through a piece. I have never written anything so small in my life as I did in my practise pieces. The exam piece had taken about six shorthand-notebook pages. With my new teeny writing and word abbreviations I was down to one and a quarter pages. Roll on exam try no 2... And, maybe, a higher graded position
Every Thursday, the Public Service Official Circular (PSOC) came around the rooms. Everybody looked at it to see what graded jobs were going over the whole of the govt, including for typists. We all knew everybody's salary because the PSOC included it.
I flipped through the pages. Then flipped back again -
What -?
There was a position for a Supervising Typist at Customs Head Office, just down the road from where I was working.
It was a supervising typist job. Not a supervising shorthand-typist job. And it was one grade up from my present position. The gods couldn't have been kinder. Angels were singing. Not one alarm bell rang in my head.
Little did I know.....
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