Open Writing

My first experience in the adult world of commerce came when, as a gangling, bespectacled, shy, blush-if-spoken-to 14-year-old, I began work as a junior clerk in the office of a boiler making company.

I’d left school on a Friday and started work the following Monday. This was 1944, the year the Halifax district changed its annual holiday week from August to July. The Education Authority were a little behind times and their end of term did not coincide with the new arrangements.

My interview had been organised by my headmaster and the office manager, Mr. Wood, who was bald apart from a few wispy white hairs. He dictated a list of numbers and asked me to add them up. He also set me a problem, something to do with lampposts along a road and how many there were. I never knew how I fared with these questions, but I got the job! Perhaps no one else applied!

The general office was an enormous room with eight large desks, five on one side and three on the other. The first was occupied by Doreen, 12 months my senior, who typed the invoices. Behind her sat Dora, a pretty 20-year-old who costed out work cards for invoice typing. These were in code so that 2/6d read O/M, etc.

Number three desk was mine and, like the others, was about ten feet long with drawers down each side and a sloping top. My chair was a round swivel type, all wood.

The duties were twofold. Each day I filed copies of correspondence. The key to the system was kept in an enormous leather-bound book about four inches thick. Customers were entered under towns with a special number. I had to put the correct numbers on and file them. Occasionally I got this wrong, as some of the firms had branches in several towns.

My other task was to add up the day book. Each invoice was entered in different columns and then at the end. In theory if all the columns were added up and then added together, they would tie up with the total of totals, if you get the drift. Usually it didn’t.

Behind me sat Joyce, who entered the ledgers, and at the back sat the wages clerk. Down the other side were Mr. Fielding and Kenneth, who dealt with the orders, then Mr. Denby, a dark-haired man in a grey smock who did the costing.

The front desk was the domain of the office manager, Mr. Wood, and in a small corner on a high stool was Stanley, the office boy. His job was to answer the phone and deal with the post, for which he was paid the princely sum of 12/6d. I got 15/-. I could never understand this, as Stanley was older than me and had been to a better school. Our hours were 8 am to 5:45 pm and 8 am to 12 on Saturdays. So Stanley and I earned our money.

One of our duties was to find people for phone calls. It puzzled my young mind when at certain times of day the men used to disappear. I was told they would be ‘in the corner’. There were two of these for the men and two for the women. One of the men’s was downstairs in the boiler room. I would stand at the top of the steps and shout my message. Eventually the man in question would emerge with a newspaper tucked under his arm.

The Ladies were situated in the staircase to the typists’ room. One of these was all blue and white willow pattern. I suppose these days it would be valuable.

At the top of the stairs was the typists’ office, where I did the filing, and the drawing office, where the older files were kept. The typists did not have shorthand notebooks but meticulously tore up old papers and ruled lines. Whether it was because there was a war on or the boss was too skinny to buy them, I never knew.

Envelopes were typed and taken down to Stanley, who stamped them and entered them in a book. When the letters had been signed, he put them in their respective envelopes and took all the post in a large leather satchel to the post office, which was quite a distance away. So he ran all the way.

Another member of staff was Sylvia, a redhead, who worked in the time office down in the factory. She was getting married and wanted an ornament for the top of the cake. Because of the war things like this were non-existent. I told my Mum of her plight, and Mum offered hers, which had been placed under a glass dome by Granddad and resided in my bedroom. Sylvia gladly accepted the offer, and we got a piece of cake.

Sylvia’s boss was the Works Manager, Asa, a small man in a grey smock which was never fastened, a flat cap, which appeared to be permanently glued to his head, and a matchstick permanently sticking from the corner of his mouth. He used to write his letters in shorthand, which Sylvia had to decipher and type. This fell to me when she left, and we always seemed to be sending out postcards saying the goods were ready but there was an embargo on the railway, so could not be dispatched.

Friday was payday, and what a procedure! Mr. Wood went first, then everyone else in order of seniority. When my turn came, I was told to go through the door at the back of the office and to the small room at the end of the corridor. I felt rather like Alice as I went along the narrow passage flanked on each side with the offices of the Director and Company Secretary.

On reaching the central door at the end, I knocked timidly and entered the holy of holies. Feeling more and more like Alice as she met the caterpillar on his toadstool, I faced the Managing Director, who puffed at his pipe as he viewed me with a stern look over the top of his horn-rimmed spectacles with bottle bottoms which served as lenses. He greeted me with a curt, “Yes, Miss?” as he counted out my 15/- all in silver. I signed my name in the enormous book on his large polished desk and beat a hasty retreat.

Not long after I started work the government brought out a ruling that employees under 21 had to have a break mid-morning. Something called National Milk Cocoa was issued. Dora was in charge of this, and we ‘youngsters’ would disappear into the tiny dark kitchen each morning for our elevenses.

Eventually the men who had been in the forces came back and jobs were changed. Joyce left when her husband was demobbed from the RAF. Dora moved into her job and eventually married Edward from the drawing office. I got fed up of having to ask for all my rises and got a job elsewhere at double the money, increasing from £1.5.0d to £2.10.0d.

My first experience in the adult world is still fresh in my memory. Have I changed very much since those far-off days? The specs are still there, bifocals now. The shape is no longer gangling but well-padded and round.

Most of the shyness has gone -I still blush occasionally. But I’m still rubbish at adding up!