Hartley Neita, ContributorA JOB description describes who you report to, who you liaise with, and who you supervise - if you are in a senior post. If you are at the bottom of the ladder, you will not supervise anyone.
The first time I recall seeing a job description was about 30 years ago.
Before that, you were either told and shown what you were employed to do, or given this information in a two-paragraph letter.
In my time as a junior employee, everybody did everything.
I learnt, for example, how to operate a telephone switchboard - now a relic of the past - use a typewriter, operate a Gestetner copying machine, cut a stencil and file letters.
It was not demeaning to take the office letters to the post office and mail them. If you were passing someone's desk and the telephone rang, you automatically answered it, took a message if there was one, and wrote it down for the person to see when they returned to his or her desk.
DOING EVERYTHING
Later, when I joined the Government Public Relations Office (the forerunner of the Jamaica Information Service), I learnt to splice tapes, and work as a grip in a television studio (i.e. the person who moves the props on the set, adjusts the microphones and lights, and do other odd jobs which he is instructed to do by the director).
I started in the news section of the GPRO, but learnt to write copy for brochures and magazines for the publications section.
I also studied the scripts written by Carey Robinson for radio documentaries, and in later years wrote some, too.
One of my colleagues in the GPRO at that time was Corina Meeks. She was in the publications section, but learnt to design and mount exhibitions, write news releases and caption photographs, among many other things.
She also became a brilliant interviewer, and was the lady who did the most comprehensive interviews with National Hero Norman Manley before he died.
I also learned to take photographs with a Speed Graphic camera, and process the film.
I remember one day the department's photographer was out of office and there was an unscheduled call from Chief Minister Norman Manley's office to say a photographer was required to photograph him doing something or the other.
When I entered his office with the camera, he was slightly annoyed.
"Where is your photographer?" he said. Very curtly.
"I am, sir," I replied.
He glared. "It had better be a good picture. Or you will discover that I do not suffer fools trying to be smart."
The photograph was published on the front page of The Daily Gleaner the following day. Mr. Manley never commented on it to me. Neither did I ever remind him that I was the photographer he had scorned. Or dared to.
Those years were BJD, that is, Before Job Descriptions. All of us, as young workers in the public and private sectors were jack of all trades.
We did not consider it demeaning, for example, to wrap magazines while sitting on the floor of the office, packaging them, putting them in the trunk of our cars and carrying them to the post office for mailing. We learnt to do everything that was required.
TYPIST, PHOTOGRAPHER
I remember visiting Omar Davies at his home years ago and seeing him typing the script on his word processor for a series of broadcasts he did at that time, for which he won a Seprod Award.
Norman Manley once took a camera from a Gleaner photographer and took pictures of the journalists who had accompanied him on an assignment.
Three of these photographs were published in a full-page spread in The Star.
Oh, he was so proud of it that he kept it on his desk for days and pointedly showed me that he had three published photographs in a newspaper - hinting that I merely had one. He was so subtle!
Those who work with him will tell you that Prime Minister Patterson loves to edit anything placed before him.
If he was King James, he would have edited and re-written the Bible.
And I remember once when Edward Seaga flew in a fixed-wing aircraft over Jamaica click-clicking a camera to show JIS photographer Errol Harvey how to take aerial photographs.
Unfortunately, the pictures taken were of the wheels and wings of the plane. I have always suspected that Harvey switched the negatives on Seaga.
DIVERSIFY YOURSELF
The point is that you must do other things than what you are employed to do. That is the only way you can broaden your experience and learn other disciplines.
Norman Manley was a one-time photographer for example.
And if Finance Minister Davies can type his own material, Prime Minister Patterson can edit and re-write his letters, memos and speeches, and former PM Seaga can click a camera, and they do not think it is below the level of their status, so can you.
Diversify yourself. A job description should not be a shackle. And you will be a much more rounded person.
