TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 13, 1972

Hi there

 I decided to put in for a new typing job, any public service typing job.  I just wanted to get away from Rossmore House, at the top of Molesworth Street, Thorndon.  Education's regional office in Wellington  was too far away from the city for a town bunny like me.

 There were no non-shorthand jobs for in-charge positions being advertised in the Public Service Official Circular but there were several Senior Typist positions up for grabs.  I applied for one in a different government department. It was a senior typist (dictaphone) position.  I was called for an interview.

The 'girls' in the typing pool fluffed around me, advising what to wear to the interview, how to conduct myself and how to answer questions.  Mrs Brown, the Typist-in-Charge wished me luck as she shoo-ed me out the door.  The wonderful thing about applying for jobs in the government family was that everybody was happy for you to go to interview.  An applicant was given time off, best wishes were thrown at you like confetti, there was no skulking out of the room and pretending you were going to the dentist...

At the interview, my first real interview ever, I completely failed at impressing the three interviewers - 

"...and why do you want this job," I was asked.

"It's closer to the bus stop," I said.

I lost out on the job.

But ... the next interview I went to was for the position of - wait for it! - 'Typist-in-Charge' at the Wellington Regional Office of the Health Department.  And ... there was no shorthand involved.  Score!

I got the job.  Somehow.

There were four of us in the typing room at Education House, Willis Street, in Wellington -

Roxy, Elizabeth, and Tracey each had the title of Staff Typist.  I was two rungs above them on the typing scale.   I was so happy with my new position.  

There was one fly-in-the-ointment:  Elisabeth was overseas when I joined the department and had been away for quite some time.  She had taken leave-without-pay to travel the world with her boyfriend. 

She had previously held my position of TIC in this very same pool but when she returned a month after I started she would be just a plain old ordinary Staff Typist.  Her in-charge position hadn't been able to be held over past a certain date.

To me, Elisabeth was my Ghost of Christmas Past.  The Shadow Over My Shoulder.  My nemesis.  I was sure that everything I did was being scrutinised by her.  We were the same age but to me, she seemed more mature, more with-it, more aware of the goings-on of the department because of her past knowledge of the ins and outs of the place.  She was tall and beautiful.  She wore stiletto shoes every day to work and didn't even hide them under her desk and turn to flatties to run up and down between floors.  Her boyfriend was god-like in looks and taller than her.  The two together would have won charisma contests.  

My administration director sent me on a course (during work-time, wow) to learn how to be a great leader.  Well, I learnt to hang a wad of paper beside the room's one telephone so that people could take down messages.  I also learnt to check up occasionally on how 'my' staff were progressing.

One lunch-hour period, I wandered around the three empty desks in the room.  Elisabeth had been typing a letter to her boyfriend who was out of Wellington - 

"The bitch got me to do some urgent typing..."

Tracey was the junior typist, a happy breezy young lady, thrilled to be in a job straight from school.  Roxy, typist no 3, was a different kettle of fish.  She was accurate to a fault, the trouble being that she was incredibly slow.  A complicated one page table that the other typists could complete inside a morning, took Roxy two or three days.  She checked every figure, letter, paragraph, sentence, over and over again, many times.

Roxy also had an obsession with cleanliness.  After visiting the loo she would spend twenty minutes washing her hands. She would don white gloves to open the loo door to get herself back to the typing room.  Eating a snack bag of peanuts at lunchtime, would necessitate Roxy using a spoon to get the peanuts out from the bag, yet again wearing her gloves.

In 1972 we didn't know about OCD.  We were in the Health Department, and yet nobody picked up on Roxy's behaviour.  In the pool, we just shrugged, thinking "Oh, well, that's just Roxy...".

Every morning we four took turns typing cheques on a special machine that was hell to learn how to use.  The cheques were to reimburse doctors, so had to be sent out with alacrity and accuracy.

I wasnt very fast on the cheque machine.  Figures were always my downfall.

"You're not very good at it, are you?" said Roxy smugly. She could do her portion in two hours.

The next day I broke her record by half-an-hour.   Goodness, I was such a revengeful person.

I liked typing at Health Regional Office.  There was an ordinary in-tray in front of me, as well as an urgent in-tray.  Of course, most of the officers put their work in the urgent basket.  Or, if I wasn't in the room, they set their manuscripts right slap-dab across the keys of my electric typewriter.  Or on my chair.  Or they hovered around my desk until my return.  It was pain of death, of course, if an officer tried to jump the queue by approaching a staff typist.

One officer was The Visiting Medical Practitioner.  He would make appointments at various doctors' surgeries up and down the country, pretending he was 'just a patient'.  Then ... he would announce he was there to do a spot review.

All his work came in by dictaphone tape.  He was hilarious with his reports on the shenannigans the staff at different surgeries got up to...

  

"

TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 12

Typist-in-Charge, Episode 12

Curriculum Development Unit, Department of Education, August 1969-1971, Senior Typist (Display)

above: Curriculum Development Unit..  My golfball typewriter hadn't arrived yet.

The office in Hobson Street, Thorndon, was a 25 minute fast walk to the city shops.  .I could maybe, at a pinch, cut five minutes off if I cut through the Thorndon School playground, and then through the grounds of Parliament Buildings.    Thorndon School used to be the 'in' school for embassy officials to send their kids.  Many of these children would roll up to school sitting all alone in the back seat of posh chauffeur-driven limos.

We had an office assistant at the Curriculum Development Unit:  Jennie, a lovely Maori lady, a solo mum, with the happiest personality ever.  We all adored her for her liveliness and willing-to-help  attitude.  One morning she came bouncing into the typing area.

 "I'm in!  I'm in!" 

I stopped typing, and bounced around the room with her. 

"The Maori teaching course?" I burst out.  "Is that it?  Is it?  Is it-?"  

"Yes! Yes! Yes!  I've been accepted.."

Jennie was going to be practically an inaugural student for the teaching of Maori in schools project.  She spoke Maori fluently, and wanted so much to pass on her knowledge.  I was happy for her that she had achieved her goal.  I decided to take on Jennie's determination and get to my goal too. There were about half a dozen more rungs on the ladder for me.

After about 18 months in Hobson Street, the CDU moved to a brand new multi-storey building, that was a couple of blocks west of Hobson Street, at the very tippy-tip top of Molesworth Street, yet still in Thorndon.  I wouldn't have to cut through the school anymore to get to town.  Hooray, five minutes less walking to the city.  Buses were few and far between.  There were only about three shops in the entire street.

above:  Rossmore House, Molesworth Street, Thondon, Wellington.  The building on the right wasnt there at the time.

There were several other divisions of the Department of Education in Rossmore House, including the regional office typing pool where I was plonked (Mrs Fraser had since retired from the CDU, without even letting me know she was leaving).  There were about ten of us typists.  The Shorthand Typist-in-Charge, was Mrs Brown.  She stared, greedily, at my IBM Selectric Golfball typewriter, the only one in the room.

"We'll all share that machine," she said.

"But I'm a senior typist, " I babbled.  "Doing display work for the CDU.  I'm graded - "  I really didn't want to lord it over the others in the pool but I had to let this woman understand that I typed only for one division, that the golfball typewriter had been bought by the CDU.

Mrs Brown was new to the government.  She had been chosen from 'outside' because - wait for it - she could do shorthand.  She was the only one of us who had the skill.  Not that Mrs Brown did any shorthand whilst she was at Rossmore House.  She had been chosen because 'Shorthand Typist-in-Charge' had always been the official title for every rung on the in-charge graded position ladder, even though shorthand was rarely used by appointees.  Shorthand was so a dying language.

Mrs Brown obviously didn't hear my wailing about how important I was.  She started making a rota of who would share my machine.

I rang up Mrs Rowley at Head Office who was still the Lord High Executioner of Wellington typists. 

I never heard another word from Mrs Brown about taking over my machine.

It was good to be in a pool again.  I had missed the companionship of a clutch of fellow (fellow?) typists.  I became friendly with Margie who was nervously going for her drivers' licence.  We all wished her well as she nervously took off to do the test.

She was back in 20 minutes.  "I've failed..."

"Oh, no...."  We fluttered around her sorrowfully.  "What did you do wrong?" somebody asked.

"I never got out of the carpark," cried Margie.  "The instructor asked me to back out, turning right.  And ....  and ....  I kept turning the car left.  Over and over.  And over.  We went round in circles. .."

In those days there were only a couple of shops in Molesworth Street, ie, a dairy, and and the expensive dress shop, "The Mews", where it was rumoured the Prime Minister's wife and the Govermor-General's wife shopped for cocktail dresses.  

There was practically no cover when it rained.  I couldn't even cut through the grounds of Parliament anymore to get to town because The Beehive addition to old Parliament Buildings was being erected and the grounds were closed off.  It took me the same amount of time to get to Hays-Wright-Stephenson's department store as it had when I worked in Hobson Street.

Over three consecutive days, there was tremendous rain, coupled with the notorious Wellington wind.  On each of those three days, I had a different umbrella blow inside out.

"That's it,"  I decided.  "I'm putting in for any job that comes up in The Public Service official Circular -"

***

 

  

TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 11

Hi there

It was 1969.  I was Senior Typist (Display) at the Curriculum Development Unit of the Department of Education in Hobson Street, Thorndon,Wellington, Yippee, at last, I had my foot on the first rung of the typing graded position ladder.    

At the CDU, I typed all the yearly booklets, pamphlets, reports, exams that were needed for the secondary schools' syllabus.  

And I got a spanking new Selectric golfball typewriter, the only one in the department.  Scored!

above: not quite the model I worked on but this machine is showing a good view of the 'golfball'.

above: similar to the machine I had.

Please imagine a small metal ball with every alphabet letter and number that's on a general typing keyboard crammed around this ball.  The ball is clipped onto a fork in the basket of the typewriter.  And - bingo! - when a typist types, the ball rotates up into the air, fights its way through the inky ribbon, and miraculously finds the right letter/number to put on the page.

I could prise out this general golfball, and in its place slot in different  golfballs containing umlats, italics, symbols, or macrons.  There were other golfballs too, full of mathematical figures, foreign languages, fractions, and  scientific equations.  Frequently I used a golfball for just the one key strike.

The Maori language, full of macrons, was difficult to type on a golfball machine because every time I came to a letter that required a macron above it, I would have to change golfballs.  

And I wonder if anybody realises how many upside down question marks there are in a Spanish-language exam paper?  

My record for the highest amount of golfball changes in one line was seventeen.  I got blisters on my index finger.

The Curriculum Development Unit was in two separate buildings, a one minute walk away from each other.  At morning and afternoon tea time, the officers from the other building trekked over to my building, no 32.  Obviously it was to partake of Mrs Fraser's piping hot and freshly made scones, cakes, biscuits, and savouries.  I don't know how she fitted in time to type.  Um.   Well ...   She didn't much.

above: 1969.  In my memory this building was numbered 28 Hobson Street (corner of Hobson Crescent)

above: the building as it is now.  It seems to have a different street number from no. 28, the building I knew.  Actually, the only thing I truly recognise is the entrance arch.  At present, it's an apartment block. 

above: side view, 32 Hobson Street where I worked for the CDU.  (yes, yes I know I've shown you this building a couple of times before but, sigh, needs must...).  Photo taken from 'the other end' of Hobson Crescent.

above: modern day view. It's a house and nowadays is numbered 33 Hobson Street. ??

I would shoot between the two buildings quite a bit to ask a question about my typing (translation: when I couldn't read the writing).  I adored the old-fashioned architecture and layout that was inside no. 28 (?), with its beautiful wood-look, and all the nooks and crannys of the work spaces.  We had the entire building.

The directors at the Curriculum Development Unit weren't a bad crowd, except for the one who kept his hand on my mini-skirted thigh as I drove him to the railway station one evening.  

I never reported it ...  

I was too scared to rock the boat.

*** One of my four readers has told me that after  the CDU  building was the Curriculum Development Unit, it became a hostel.  And she stayed there!  Wow, great information...

TYPIST IN CHARGE, episode 3

Hi there

Here's episode 3 of 'Typist in Charge', my typing years' bio that I'm supposed to write for you once a month but seem to be a bit neglectful over the timeline -

***

Mrs Parr sloshed into Typing Room 305, Education Department Head Office, Government Buildings, Wellington.  She looked like a drowned rat.  Her linen coat and once-smart figure-hugging dress clung around her like a bunch of wet washing.  Her peepy-toe shoes leaked droplets of water.  Her rainhat - one of those finger-length strips of plastic that miraculously unfolded into a bonnet that did up in a bow under the chin - was draped wetly across her forehead, dyed blonde curls snaked in the wet down to her nose.  She clutched a short tightly-rolled umbrella, the fold-up style that had only recently hit the market;  yes, the early 1960's was such a 'with-it' era.

"I hate-hate-hate fold-up umbrellas!"  Mrs Parr, near to retirement and this icon of well-known stability, actually stamped her feet.  Mrs Rowley, our Typist-in-Charge, tsk-tsked heavily as she noted the muddy footprints on the lino. Thank goodness footprints would wipe off, unlike the threepenny-piece sized gouges everywhere on the floor where the typists had walked in stiletto heels.

Elspeth and Evaline nodded solemnly, obviously glad they hadn't gone to town in the rain for their lunch.  Francie rushed to help Mrs Parr pull off her soaked-through coat.

Mariana, our whiz at anything mechanical, muttered that these new-style umbrellas were hopeless as nobody could open them.

"Except Lorraine..."  Mrs Rowley acknowledged me.  And trying my best to look humble I gave a demonstration on the proper and efficient way to open a folding umbrella without a half-closed canopy collapsing on one's head.  Or, as seemed to be the case with Mrs Parr,  how to work the catch to even open the darn contraption.  Trumphantly, I ended my demo without ripping my finger.  I was heartily applauded.

Yes, we 'girls' helped each other in many ways. I helped them in jobs like opening umbrellas, and the other typists helped me when I couldn't understand an officer's bad writing, spelling, or adding up.  As well, they enlightened me in The Ways of The World.  One evening about half a dozen of us younger typists went out for a meal.  The typists who were enlightened in The Ways of The World started talking about the four letter word.

Amy, a new typist, and she was a Salvation Army girl to boot, looked across at me in puzzlement.  I shrugged.  "What's a four letter word?" I asked.  I was 16 and prior to this conversation had truly thought I was conversant with The Ways of The World.

"Mmmm..."  Mariana's forehead creased as she was thinking.  Finally:  "It rhymes with 'duck'."

Nope.  Neither Amy nor I had a clue.  (...and back to the present for a moment:  in the supermarket the other day, I heard an under five-year-old spouting the word that, indeed, rhymes with 'duck'.  No-one batted an eyelid.)

One thing that the typists couldn't help me with was my typing.  I wasn't very good at it.  I just didn't have the patience to check my work.  If there was a long job, maybe twenty or more foolscap pages, I  could ask another typist to silently scan my finished typing whilst I read out loud to her from the writer's manuscript.  And yet, still, Mrs Rowley insisted that I hand all my finished typing to her for re-checking.  Much of it came back for retypes.  How did the woman put up with me?  Beats me.

***

Below: an exact google image of a 1960's rainhat

below.  A google image of an Imperial 66 typewriter from my era.