General Chat

I remember mine: 22 July 1968 (£8.00 a week with a half-crown rise every six months). I started working at an estate agents as secretary to the junior partner - just a week after leaving secretarial college. I duly arrived at 9.00 to be told to go through the door to the back and upstairs where my boss's office was. Unfortunately, there were two doors. As the senior partner's name was on one I assumed it must be the other door. As I opened it a brush fell out and there was the vacuum cleaner and all the other cleaning stuff. I'd walked into the understairs cupboard. At the end of the day I took the 20 letters I'd typed in to my boss to be signed and put the cover on my typewriter ... only to be called in to be asked whether I expected these letters to be posted. I said yes I thought so. "So where are the envelopes?" he asked. Two years at secretarial college and it hadn't dawned on me that in the big wide world the letters I typed would actually be put in the post!!!! A few weeks later it was my turn to 'do' a Saturday morning. I was a bit early and was first in the office ... went to the loo, flushed the cistern and it came away from the wall. I had to stand there holding it until someone (needless to say it was my boss) arrived and could come to my assistance. Not sure how, but I survived there for two years and when I left it was my choice!! Sue

Sometime inSeptember 1948. Sisson & Parker were a very large book and fancy goods store in Nottingham. I became the office junior, and quickly felt the shocks that the old-fashioned switchboard would give off. Weekly wage of £1.10s.0d (thirty-bob) Some chap phoning up and becoming most indignent with me when I confessed to him that I hadn't read 'Mein Kamf' The managing director who seemed to be very very posh would ask me to go to a little nearby shop to get him a jam sandwich. These were sliced cut from the loaf, held in the hand to have the marge and jam spread on, folded over, then put into a scrap of paper that didn't cover them. I used to be so embarrassed when I handed them over to him. AAAhhh memories!!! Norah