My First Job

I left school quite young, and my first 'real' job was in a lawyer's office in the town of Brighton, England. I was hired as an assistant to the receptionist and my duties included answering the phone on a huge old switchboard with all kinds of plugs. You may have seen something like it on the movies. There were about 10 'solicitors' in the building, which was a huge old 4 storey mansion. The basement contained various offices for most of the secretarial staff and in my early days of working, there was a small dark-room for making photocopies. There was also a kitchen where the building superintendent and his wife would make afternoon tea. They lived in part of the top floor, which was reached by a different stairway, and also contained a second rented flat.

The owner of the firm was a man in his 60's and he liked to do things the old fashioned way since he took great pride in the firm's reputation. This included delivering mail on foot to all local firms within a radius of about two miles. This was one of my duties and my first day on the job and new to the area, I was sent off with a large bag of mail. No one gave me any instructions as to the order of delivery so I was completely at a loss except for the main street. I returned exhausted and quite upset, hours later ! I think they believed I had done a flit !!

Upon arrival at the office each morning I would sit at a huge old wooden table with the other receptionist to open the mail. As I did this I would open The Times newspaper and read it and after a few weeks she became quite annoyed by this. I don't know why she objected, since it didn't slow me down. The mail was put into piles for the different solicitors and then I went round to their offices to deliver it. I got to know them all quite well and with several of them I would have great conversations. I seem to remember spending quite a bit of time talking even though I was so much younger than the solicitors. One man in particular, who was probably in his 50's used to talk to me for ages. He was a crusty old guy, quite a character. I remember one day I answered the phone in his room, while he was out. The phones in those days had a curved mouthpiece and when I picked it up I noticed that it was covered with dry spittle !!

My employer was married and his wife had a voice like a man, which was rather stressful when you answered the phone. She would say "This is Mr... B..." and it was hard to tell for a moment whether it was the wife or the husband, so I always dreaded those calls. Periodically the owner would call me into his office (he had the largest one on the ground floor, where his eldest son was also located). He would say, "When you speak to me, I want you to call me "Sir". I had been raised to think that you did not say "Sir" to a man, so I would respond, "Yes, Mr. B..." but I never called him Sir. He seemed to take it in good part !

Besides answering the switchboard, which was quite traumatic since I was inclined to be absent minded and often forgot people on hold with so many calls coming in, I was also sent to the dark room to make copies. It was a small room with a large sink and vats for developing chemicals. There I would stand, sometimes for hours in virtual darkness except for a small yellow light hanging from the ceiling. I occupied my time, at first, singing quite loudly to myself, without realizing that everyone in the basement could hear me. One day a secretary in the next room made a comment about my singing, and as I am not renowned for my voice, being tone deaf, after that I no longer sang. The chemicals had to be mixed up for developing and did not last long, so often if there was a lot of copying to be done I had to mix new. It was not a job I enjoyed.

Another of my duties was to take afternoon tea around to all the offices on a large tray. Tea time was on the dot of 4 p.m. and it was considered quite bad manners for anyone to phone in at that time, or until about 4.15. About 3.30 the superintendent or his wife, sometimes both, would go to the kitchen and put an enormous kettle of water on the cooker. There was a huge teapot and that was filled with at least a teaspoon of loose tea per person.

After I had been working there for some months the dark room was replaced with a copy machine. That also had to be filled with chemicals and those also did not last very long. I remember one afternoon, I had been requested late in the afternoon to make some copies and mail them out that day. I tried to do so but the machine was not working very well. Everyone else had left for the day and I decided it would be better to just type the document instead of redoing the chemicals. By that time I had been promoted to the position of secretary, having taken time off every morning for a few months to learn typing and shorthand. I was tapping away on the typewriter when I heard footsteps and turned around to find my boss. I was in tears since I was supposed to meet one of my new co workers for an outing and was short of time. When he saw how upset I was he suggested that I change the chemicals and copy the document instead of trying to type it. The next day, he also told the other solicitors that they were not to leave me to cope with something like that alone in future, which was very nice of him.

The thing I most enjoyed doing, was drawing maps and compass points on the deeds when there was real estate involved. All deeds were typed on parchment paper with a pink edge. This came as a single 2 page document (both sides would be typed on if necessary, so it was actually 4 pages) and if it was a long document similar pink lined paper had to be inserted in the middle. There were holes in the margin and it was tied together with pink ribbon. You had to figure out how long the document was before you started the third page (whether to use an insert or use the 3rd and 4th pages of the folder) or you would have to redo the first few pages. The map was drawn with waterproof ink and as I was quite good at this, being of a meticulous nature, everyone in the building was soon bringing their documents to me. Each document was proof read with another secretary and with the double sided parchment, if anything was omitted the entire thing had to be retyped. I soon learned to be quite careful and would check each paragraph myself before proceeding on with the next. It was easy to miss a line since everything was single spaced.

Copies were also made with carbon paper, and since I was not the best typist at that time, this was also a problem. Whenever an error was made you had to erase each copy. There was no white out and my fingers soon became very calloused from using an eraser. The callous was still there about 15 years later, though it is now gone.

At first we were paid each Friday with cash in a small brown envelope. Later we were given checks, which seemed very exciting to me. We worked 9 to 5, but there was a fairly long lunch hour. The pay was miniscule, but since I was living at home with my mother it seemed plenty at the time.

My mother and I decided to emigrate to Canada, so after 2 1/4 years I left, never to hear from any of my coworkers again. I was sad to leave and have several pictures of myself with various friends made there. They took up a collection and gave me a few going away gifts. I have long since forgotten what those were, except for a pair of earrings which I still have, not having thought of them until writing this article.