Hartley Neita, ContributorExcept for the brief moments when two or three members of staff pause in their work to talk to one another in offices today there is, generally, a peace and quiet in these places.
It was not so, up to 20 years ago. The clicking and clacking of manual typewriters created a din. Secretaries were therefore usually placed in a separate area in the office.
Before, about 1960, the majority of typewriters in offices in Jamaica were manually operated. The keys had to be hit very hard. At that time, too, there were no copying machines, and so carbon paper was placed between the original document and the copy or copies. Not more than four legible copies could be made at one time.
Executive position
Very few women held executive offices then. They were the telephone operators, the telephone-receptionists and the secretary/typists. In the government service they were a few female clerks, telegraph operators, postal clerks and post mistresses.
Many young women with higher schools certificates (today's GCE "A") went to commercial schools after graduating from secondary schools and then entered the service as typists.
The only advantage they had was that they started two increments ahead of other women and male civil servants who only had the schools certificates (today's GCE 'O'). They were the sharpeners of their senior officers' pencils (hewers of wood), and drawers of their coffee.
When it was necessary to make numerous copies of documents, for example ministry papers for all members of Parliament and members of the Legislative Council, these were done by stencils. These stencils were transparent waxed paper. The typist removed the ribbon from the typewriter, the stencil was rolled into the typewriter, and the material typed on it. The stencil was then placed over a cylinder in a special printing machine. Black "paste" with the consistency of toothpaste was poured into the machine which "inked" the cylinder. It was then spun manually, or electrically to turn out the copies.
The first copiers required a cumbersome process. Copying machines were like kerosene oil stoves. Liquids were mixed in a bowl, and the copies when made were wet and had to be hung out to dry. The desks used by clerks had dips at the back, the first for correspondence and files coming in, another dip for matters pending, another dip in which drafts of letters to be typed were placed, and another dip in which things to be filed away were placed.
Cashiers were placed in cages enclosed with heavy mesh wire. As time passed, this wire rusted and became black and tangled with cobweb which became harder and harder to remove. Only senior officers had telephones on their desks. Junior clerks had the use of a communal phone. Personal telephone calls were frowned on.
In the government service, very senior officials were provided with swivel chairs with cane seats. Permanent Secretaries and some heads of departments were entitled to a cushion. Lower grade officers sat in ordinary chairs, until they reached a more senior level when they were provided with chairs with arms.
It is not so long ago too, that female clerks and typists in the government service had to resign if they got married, and woe betide, if they became pregnant. And when Eric Bell decided that pregnant unwed female teachers were eligible for paid maternity leave, some Christian leaders disagreed with it, saying that "to justify paid maternity leave for unwed teachers on economic grounds is to divorce moral content from one's conduct, and so any behaviour, however immoral, could be so justified".
Teachers, they said, had a great responsibility to the society; "they have great responsibility to the young who constitute a very large portion of the population".
Window units
It was only during the latter half of the 20th century that offices were air-conditioned. At first, very senior officials in the civil service and senior managers in the private sector were provided with window units. Lower grade personnel had to make-do with electric fans. Every desk in offices had two inkwells, one with red ink and the other with black ink. Receipts had to be drawn with indelible pencils. This prevented forgery as it was impossible to cleanly erase words and figures written with these pencils.
Junior offices in the civil
service and store clerks had to wear white shirts and ties to work. Senior officials wore jackets and ties. So, too, did the headmasters of Elementary Schools. Suits and ties were dispensed with during World War 2 (1939 to 1945), at first during the summer months and later all-year round.
Politicians from rural parishes travelled by train to attend meetings of the Legislative Council. For them, travel was free in the first class carriages.
And they were not paid. Times have certainly changed.
