Towards the end of summer, in 1969, I managed to secure a job as a clerk in a government department. It was an incredibly boring job. I had nothing to do. I begged my superiors to give me more work, but they said there was none. I just had to master the art of looking busy, like they did. A couple of weeks I was even forced to work overtime, not that there was anything to do, but they were all working overtime and they said it would look bad if I didn’t too. In desperation I took to hiding novels in government files; that way, I could sit at my desk and read without everyone telling me, ‘Look busy, girl. Look busy!’
I became so bored that, one day, I took a dress patten to work. I laid it out on a large table in our office and began cutting. My immediate boss walked up behind me.
‘You’re cutting out a dress?’ he said incredulously.
‘Well, I’ve nothing else to do,’ I replied.
‘Oh dear,’ he said softly, ‘oh dear, dear me,’ and disappeared. He returned a few minutes later with the section head.
‘What’s this? What’s this? What are you up to now, girl?’ he said crossly. ‘Last week, you were drawing dragons on all our estimate folders and now you’re here with this. Do you know what you’re doing?’
‘I’m cutting out a dress.’
‘Don’t get smart with me, girlie. Put it all away, what if the Super walked in, how would it look? I don’t mind you reading, but you can’t come to work and expect to sew.’ I sighed and packed up my things.
I lasted there about six months and then I resigned. And I thought school was boring. That was my first experience of being employed and I hadn’t liked it one bit. It was an important experience for me, because it taught me something about myself that I had been unaware of. I wasn’t going to be satisfied with just anything. And I wasn’t lazy.
I had been unemployed about four months when I decided that it was time I began looking for another job. I was sick of sitting around at home with little to do.
I found a job as a laboratory assistant. For some reason, my new employer assumed that as I had studied physics and chemistry at school, I must have known something about them.
My job was to analyse mineral samples from different parts of Western Australia for tin, iron oxide, and so on.
I accidentally disposed of my first lot of samples, so, in desperation, I invented the results. My boss was quite excited. ‘Hmmm,’ he said as he looked over my recording sheet, ‘these aren’t bad. Good girl, good girl!’
I felt so guilty, I imagined that, on the basis of my analysis, they might begin drilling straightaway in the hope of a big strike. I took more care after that.
The women I worked with all had strong personalities. Our boss was hardly ever in so we took extended lunch hours and had long conversations about whatever came into our heads. I was very impressed with the whole group. They were the first females I’d met who actually had something to say.
To my delight, there was one English woman, Joan, who loved taking the mickey out of her superiors. One day, our boss returned to find us all tearing around the office in a mad game we’d invented. He berated everyone, especially the older women, for not setting a good example to me.
Joan was not to be outdone. She took a black Texta pen from his desk, painted a small Hitler-type moustache under her nose and said, in a thick German accent, ‘I gif ze orders round here!’ Then she saluted. She was a natural mimic, it was difficult not to laugh. The boss felt he couldn’t fire her because she was an excellent geologist.
The other women were just as interesting as Joan. One of them confided to me that she was schizophrenic. It was a confidence that failed to enlighten me, I just wondered what country she came from.
One day I returned to the office from my lunch hour to find everyone abnormally subdued. Our office was going to be moved away from the city.
No one was keen on this, because it meant the whole company, instead of maintaining small branches here and there, would be under one roof. We would all have to knuckle under and behave. I decided to resign.
My boss offered me a rise in pay if I stayed. He said I was the best laboratory assistant they’d ever had.
The decision was taken out of my hands when I suddenly developed industrial acne as a result of being allergic to the chemicals I was using.
By the time I left the laboratory job, I had developed an interest in psychology. I had looked the word schizophrenic up in my dictionary and found out it was not a nationality after all.
I was more realistic about myself now. I realised that the chances of me finding a job I was really happy in were remote. I needed to do further study. I decided to enrol in university for the following year, along with Jill who, having now completed her Leaving, was keen to study Law.