Hi there
1 Typist-in-Charge, Education Department Head Office, First Floor Government Buildings, Wellington. 1974-1978
I had put in for a higher-graded typist-in-charge position, this time at Customs Head Office, and it may as well have been the moon for all I knew about what one did at Customs. But it would be a break-through for typists, as opposed to the superior reign that shorthand-typists had in the in-charge typing area at this time. Shorthand-typists-in-charge rarely did shorthand. They supervised. So it always felt unfair that only shorthanders could apply for higher jobs. But imagine my surprise when I spotted an in-charge position in the Public Service Official Circular that didn't have the word 'shorthand' in front of it. It was exactly one level up from my present grade.
Right back when I was a teenager of about sixteen, terrible at typing, but with a kind caring mentor boss - Mrs Rowley - I was stationed in room 305 typing pool at Government Buildings I'd been listening to Mrs Rowley and Miss McNeil who was the Supervising Typist of all education typists, talking about overseas trips. I gestured to Miss McNeil and said enviously, "I want to be just like you." I had meant travelling the world -
Mrs Rowley giggled, "She wants to be the Supervising Typist. Hahaha..."
And everyone at that typing room morning tea giggled.
It was the only time I felt sad about what my idol had said, and that everyone in room 305 thought I wanted to aspire to the dizzying heights of Miss McNeil's job. To them all, I was so obviously scatty-Lorraine who loved rock'n'roll and movies, couldn't do maths, talked a lot, and was pretty crap at typing. According to the sniggers, there would be no way I could ever take on Miss McNeil's position.
Um...
Well...
First, I had got the Senior Typist job at the Curriculum Development Unit. Then I got the Typist-in-Charge job at Health Regional Office. This was followed by my present position as one of three typists-in-charge at Education Head Office...
But now...? Now, I'd got the Customs Typist-in-Charge job! Another grade closer to that supervising typist position at Education that I had set my sights on; I was so determined to work my way through the ranks to get up to it, to prove I wasn't that highly hopeless typist everyone had once thought I was.
It was sad to leave Education. I walked the long wide Government Buildings corridors the day I left, memories bouncing around in my head:
There were two enclosed staircases, one at each end of the building, north and south. I must have run up and down those stairs thousands of times, delivering work to officers on the various floors. Maybe the staircases were enclosed because of a danger to stair-climbers falling over the bannisters?
Sometimes I would take the easy way between levels and rattle around in the old 'cage' lift at the south end of the building. I had once seen a gangster movie where the guys in a cage lift had been machine-gunned between the bars as the lift descended. I never once rode this lift without thinking of that movie.
I walked into typing room 305 where I started out as a junior typist. Everyone now had electric typewriters, and some, the IBM golfball.
I remembered the day of the Wahine storm, 10 April 1968, when the winds reached a scary 230 km per hour as the ship Wahine sank in Wellington Harbour. We typists in room 305 had looked out the typing room windows to see a petrified business woman clinging for dear life to the wind-blown tree at the foot of the inside road leading up to Parliament Buildings.
above: Inter-island ferry, Wahine, sinking. Stock photo
I stood in Room 305, above the exact place we "girls" from the 1960s had stashed a time capsule. The floor had been sloping so workmen had come in to install a new floor. Before the new floor was added we tossed a plastic bag full of memorabilia in the gap under where the new boards would be fitted. There was the day's newspaper, that year's coin, and a few words from each of us, listing our most interesting points. I said "Lorraine loves Elvis", another typist said she was "Tall Pat", another "Francis is an indoor bowls fanatic"...
Room 305 still had the same mirror on the wall that I had used 15 years before. I thought back to the time when one of our typists had found a foreign language on the back of the 30 or so hand-written pages she was working from. None of us could figure out the words... until ....
"Hey look - " Pam was holding a page up to the mirror.
The words had been in mirror writing. The writer had been using the backs of the papers for his long departmental draft. How the handwriting got to be in mirror vision we had no idea. Perhaps the Gestetner duplicating machine was somehow responsible?
Holding page after page up to our mirror we saw that it was work-in-progress of a novel. So, the guy in Buildings Division was a closet novelist? A romantic-thriller one? Who'd-a-thunk? And... who'd also have thunk that he was having an affair with one of the typists. Well, me. I knew. But I had been sworn to secrecy by the pair.
The same went for the typist who was having an affair with one of the married directors. It was all supposed to be so super-secret-squirrel, though most of the typists knew about it.
And that reminded me of the time I was walking along the ground floor corridor and politely talking to a director as we made our way out of the building. Single-lady Marta, another typist, waved to us as she passed.
The director acknowledged Marta as she scurried away. He turned to me. "I can't understand why you aren't married?" he said. "I mean.... you're pretty. Marta is ugly."
Whaaaaaaaaat!!!!!????
I never said anything. Much to the regret of future-me. Typists had definitely been tamed....
2 Typist-in-Charge, Customs Department Head Office, PSIS Building, Whitmore St, Wellington 1978
above photo, 2025: PSIS (Public Service Investment Society) Building where I worked from 1978. It now has a new name.
My first day at Customs - I was now in charge of 12 typists. Wow. As well as my two Trades Certification Board Typing certificates (A and B), I had arrived with my fully-recognised Trades Certification Board SHORTHAND-TYPING certificate grade I. It had only been for taking down 80 words per minute but this didn't deflate me one iota. I had taught myself over the past year, using old TCB shorthand exam papers and I had passed this bloody exam on my second attempt. 'Nuff said. Now I could apply for every Shorthand-Typist-in-Charge job that came up. Heck, I could even put in for an overseas embassy post. I was in raptures.
Side-paragraph: Within a few months of passing my shorthand exam, the tight hold of shorthanders in the government was loosened drastically. Typists didnt want to learn shorthand anymore and the dictators of shorthand were (politely) informed that they wouldn't be wasting two people's time if they dictated into a dictaphone. Dozens (hundreds? millions?) of times officers had taken phone calls, made phone calls, greeted visitors, burrowed in a drawer, wrote memos, lost trains of thought, left for the loo ... whilst the poor shorthander sat patiently, writing pad on the corner of the desk, pencil poised, worrying about the urgent job she was in the middle of doing back in the pool. And practically every time the boss did receive or make a phone call, that man would grandly proclaim into the receiver, "I'm just dictating a ministerial to my shorthand-typist, you know...?". Or scrub the word 'shorthand-typist' and substitute 'girl'; the two were interchangeable .
I was led into the typing room at Customs by my Director Admin. A dozen faces looked up at me. I would be stationed in the room with them. And wonder-of-wonders, at interview I had been told that I wouldn't be typing. I would only be checking the typists' work when they finished it.
Hooray, I was in seventh heaven...
... until my boss left the room. Mavis turned to me. "We don't want you," she said. "We want Edith-" She indicated a woman sitting to my side.
Huh?
Edith, it turned out, had been understudying in the typist-in-charge job until I arrived. She had been at Customs for five years. She was three grades beneath me. She was a Senior Typist as opposed to my last two in-charge positions. People in those days in the government never skipped grades. By working upwards, an appointee had a good background behind her (or him).
"We understand you do have a background in the government," said Mavis, whilst Edith was silent, "but we know Edith, and she knows this department, and no hard feelings but we want you to go someplace else...."
*****
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