NOW ITS LIKE LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW
by Mary Morgan
Chapter 2 - page 2
As far as working anywhere else but in an office was concerned, my
mother was just as stubborn as I was. She excluded me from all "sit
down" meals and anything else to do with the family until I agreed to
apply for an office junior's position at the firm my sister was employed
at, as the Sales Manager's personal secretary, at The Midland Metal
Spinning Co. Ltd., in Pelham Street. They manufactured all sorts of
kitchen ware and what we term "whitegoods" these days. They were also
known as the Presto Pressure Cooker Company - the pressure cooker being
a new invention then. It took the form of a large stainless steel
saucepan with a heavy lid and a pressure gauge that fitted on the top,
and cooked food faster and better. I found this to be the first of the
many wonderful new inventions that people of my age have witnessed in
the last half century. After all, up till then we had been used to the
old crock pot, the cast iron stewpot and frying pan, and enamel
saucepans. With this you could cook a whole meal in one go!
 |
This is a part of an advert, from the early fifties,
showing the kind of things we were making at the Midland Metal
Spinning Company. "Tower" was just one of their brands. |
But even after I tried to make sure that I wouldn't get
the job - by pretending to be a thick as a brick with a real attitude
problem - I got it, and was told to start 9 o'clock sharp on the
following Monday morning!
Up to this time, since the last year at school, I had been made to
spend all my evenings at the Wulfrun College of Further Education
learning shorthand and typing. I was thinking I would be able to use
what I had already learnt, in this new job. Wrong! I was to do the
filing again! However as things turned out, the girl who had the job of
showing me what to do was taken sick the first week that I was there. I
don't know if it was anything I did or said but she never came back! I
was left on my own to just "get on with it." But by now the experience
I'd already had enabled me to manage quite well. So much so that
management made the small room where all the firm's filing was stored
into a "no go" area for other people. I became completely responsible
for filing away all documents used by all members of staff. I was in my
element, because I was left on my own to decide how I organised the
filing system - in rows and rows of box files. No filing cabinets or
computers there.
| "Presto" was another major brand of Midland Metal
Spinning. This is another advert from the same period. |
 |
I used to pride myself on how fast I could find
documents and deliver them to whoever had requested them. Even my big
bossy sister had to put a written request into me for any documents she
needed. This sort of responsibility given to me at such an early age has
served me well, from that day to this. I even began to enjoy working in
an office.
By my 17th birthday I was entitled to a pay rise. This took me into a
"higher" category as far as my employment was concerned, so because I
had a decent typing speed by then, management decided I would enter the
dreaded Typing Pool! In those days all the firm's sales invoices,
despatch notes etc., were all typed one at a time by "slave labour"
typists. A special room was set aside and it could contain up to thirty
typists. Each typist would start in a morning with a pile of blank forms
on one side of the typewriter and a prescribed number of handwritten
letters on the other. You would have to decipher what was being ordered,
quoted for or despatched, and type that information on to the relevant
blank form, calculating the costs as you typed, finishing off each
completed form with it's final total. If you didn't manage to finish
your allotted amount of invoices one day, they were added to your amount
for the next!
At the Midland Metal Spinning a Mrs. Farlow was in charge of that
office and I had heard some pretty horrendous stories about her from the
other typists. My sister had never worked for her, so when I complained
about my "promotion" she told mom that I was being ungrateful and
awkward at work. This resulted in my mother visiting the personnel
officer, and me being told that I either took this "promotion" or I got
the sack. I just wish I now had a penny for every invoice I ever typed
in that place.
Mrs. Farlow was a "dragon" of the first order and I have never met
anyone to match her since. One instance of her brand of office
management that is etched into my memory - is the time when I had been
working in there for about a month. Through no fault of my own I had "a
little accident" at work. One morning, after typing invoices for an hour
or so I asked politely to go to the toilet - mandatory in those days.
She refused me permission then and twice more after that. The last time
saying that, as I had only half an hour to go before lunchtime, I could
go then. But before the half-hour was up I ran out of time! Wet through,
I had to walk the length of two offices in front of male and female
staff, in order to get to the toilets at the front of the building.
Human Rights were not acknowledged in those days! I never went back
there again. I couldn't live with the embarrassment. According to my
sister, Mrs. Farlow was severely reprimanded and didn't stay there long
after that.
