Chapter 8: The World of Work

Age: 16 – 20

  After Ambition

By the time I get to that age,

When I’ve paid for all my dreams,

And some of them are realised,

But very few, it seems;

When money doesn’t matter,

And there’s no hills left to climb,

Will I be content to sit here,

Just wearing out my time?

Will I laugh at, or just wonder,

At the stop-start man I’ve been,

Who spent a lifetime waiting

For the lights to turn to green?

When regrets are not worth having,

And no glow in withered praise,

Will I sit and think of nothing

When I’m filling out my days?

Will I pause in sad reflection

Of neglected chances gone,

Of empty days I’ve wasted,

Or just sit and linger on?

Norm Wotherspoon 1973

The First Day: Was I nervous? In-CREDIB-ly so! Brother Les helped a lot – he said, walk down to the Bulimba Ferry, go across the river, take the tram into town, and there you are. He then left for his work an hour early so he didn’t have to travel with me. (I am being unnecessarily harsh to Les here – I had an interview at the Public Service Board at 9:00 a.m. – he started his work much earlier).

Just after 7:30., I set off to go to work, in my awful pink shirt and my only pair of long trousers. I arrived at the Public Service building, on the corner of George and Elizabeth Streets (diagonally opposite where the Casino is now), and submitted myself to my very first interview. It took less than five minutes, and consisted of confirming my identity, and telling me where that I would begin my public service career with the Department of Machinery, Scaffolding, Weights and Measures. The man then told me where to go, which was a tin-roofed building at the top of Mary Street (where the Executive Building now stands).

The first workmate I met was a girl, slightly older than me, much taller than me, and certainly better looking than me. She asked what I wanted, I blushed, bringing out my amazing array of pimples, and I stammered that I was to start work, then and there.

“Oh,” she said, “you’d better see Mr. Smallwood.”

I met Mr. Smallwood, an avuncular man of middle years (about 60-ish), with a kind voice and hands that darted nervouslyabout, like little fishies swimming through the air. I think he was the senior inspector of machinery. He then handed me on to someone else, and I was set to work, in the records section. I wore a large black apron, and my incredibly sensitive secret tasks were two-fold: I had to eliminate put top secret files away in their correct places in the compactus, (a set of four or five shelf, open-faced filing cabinets on wheels that ran on tracks); and to find and destroy and fetch files for various inspectors of machines, lifts, scaffoldings, and … petrol pumps. I think I wrote 14 thrilling pages about my duties in a very long letter home. Norm had arrived in BrisVegas (Thanks Leigh, for that piece of slanguage), and was on his way towards RULING the WORLD! (Insert loud, maniacal laughter here).

My debonair self-assurance received a shock at the end of my first day – I didn’t know what tram to catch to get me home. There was much laughter (accompanied by my pimple-enhancing blushes) when someone loudly broadcast my plaintive request for assistance. Jack Tenison took pity on me, and told me that, if I were going to the Bulimba Ferry, I had best catch the Bulimba Ferry tram.

Welcome to Siberia: During my time with the Department,I learned to play tennis and table tennis, and I gained a taste for gambling – cards, races … and … roulette. I had never heard of roulette until I saw a game in Myers or David Jones – a genuine roulette wheel! I learned the rules quickly, and discovered that the house usually won. I bought the game, and introduced it to my fellow junior clerks at the Department. They bet, and I usually won. Until the Friday afternoon tea break when, instead of returning to work after the ten minutes allowed, I continued taking bets until ten to four, at which time our newly appointed Chief Clerk, Jimmy McDonnell, walked into the tea room in search of his absent staff.

The following Monday morning saw me reporting for duty at the Statistical Data Section of the Division of Occupational Safety, on the fifth floor of the State Government Insurance Office (SGIO) Building on the corner of Adelaide and Edward Streets. This small section was termed Siberia by those in the George Street headquarters, because it was regarded as a place of punishment, from which no one ever returned.

My role here was possibly the most boring job in the history of work. I had to code workers’ compensation claims, in terms of nature of injury, where it happened, how it happened, worker’s occupation, and when it happened.

For example, a foreign body in the eye was a 105, a carpenter was another three digit number, and so on. We had a daily quota to achieve, and, after a week, I could complete that task by lunch time. Kev Kelly was our supervisor, a man who hated his work, and only lived for the winter weekends, when he was the live broadcast voice for rugby league games.   

Six people worked in the Statistical Data Section, consisting of the officer in charge and his deputy, and four coding clerks. We got to know each other fairly well, in such a small team. Our little outpost was site, near two windows, in one corner of a vast open floor, where SGIO workers spent their days wandering back and forth, looking incredibly important, and carrying large and small bundles of files and papers. The really senior people either carried nothing at all, or just one piece of paper, never a whole file.

I was never very nervous with SGIO staff, possibly because they were our customers, (as we were theirs – they brought us files, and we returned them after coding) rather than workmates. Because of this, I was responsible for bringing together two hearts that thought they ought to beat as one.

Our second-in-command at that time was Col O’Brien, a staunch Catholic man of settled routines and slow, steady speech. Col lived at Wooloowin, and mentioned, quite often, that his house was just a few steps from the railway station, and, after finishing work at 5.00 p.m., he would be sitting down to tea by 5.30.

One day, Col asked me what I thought of Denise, an SGIO typist in the section we had most dealings with. (YES! I KNOW one should never a sentence end a preposition with!). I said I thought she was very nice, and he asked me if I could surreptitiously find out what she thought of him. Denise and I got on very well, and I said to her, “What do you think of Col in our section?”

Denise thought that Col was nice, and I passed that on. He then gave me what I thought was such a great line that I tried it on Margaret several years (but I didn’t use a messenger). He said, “What do you think she’d say if I asked her out?”

She said “yes”, they got married, she became an air hostess, he didn’t like it, they fell out of love, and went their separated ways. (There’s a plot for a novel or a soap opera there, I think).

Work Friends: I only made two good acquaintances in my first four years of work, both of whom became friends some years later. One was Graham Hudson, who was two months older than me, easygoing, and slow to take offence. He was an only child, with a dominant mother, and I suspect he didn’t get much opportunity to socialise with his peers during his growing years, but he had far less trouble than I in forming friendships, because he was, and is, a decent, honest, very likeable person.

One night, I followed him to the tram stop, and slipped into a seat several rows behind him. When he got off the tram at Ashgrove, so did I, but, unfortunately, he saw me. He came to me, and let me know that it would not be wise for me to follow him home. I think he was concerned as to what his mother might think, but, because he was serious, and I desperately wanted his friendship, I simply boarded the tram again for its return journey.

The other friend in the making was Barry McPhee, who came to the Statistical Data Section as second in charge when Col O’Brien was promoted to a position with the Department of Children’s Services. Barry was five or six years older than me, married, with curly red hair and clear, direct blue eyes.

Barry earned extra money with the Citizens’ Military Force, the forerunner to the Army Reserve, with the Medical Corps, based in Water Street, Fortitude Valley. (The Medical Corps seems a little incongruous, given that Barry fainted at the sight of blood, which stopped him from ever donating blood after his first attempt).

Barry was one of the most practical, logical thinkers I have ever met, then and now. It enabled him to progress his career to greater heights than even he may have imagined. He was in those days a champion squash player, turning to tennis as he entered his forties. He was a Catholic, and gave a lot of time, energy and effort to the Little Kings’ Society.

Somehow I found myself invited to his Ashgrove home for tea on several occasions. Barry and his wife Margaret was wonderfully kind and caring to me. They particularly enjoyed hearing tales of the eccentricities of one or two of my brothers.

Barry had a profound influence on a career change several years later.

I formed social friendships with three SGIO workers, Michael, Terry and Jed, through a shared interest in table tennis. Through Michael I joined a Catholic youth group based around Annerley, where sometimes played tennis, sometimes burnt sausages at backyard barbecues, and sometimes we sat in a circle with a guitar-playing young priest, singing popular folk songs (We Shall Overcome, Little Boxes, and Where Have All the Flowers Gone?). I mention this because I got on exceptionally with two girls in the group, Peggy and Lesley. They played a small but significant role a little later on in my life.

Defining the Norm: What was I like, in those four years of inching up the ladder leading nowhere at the Department of Machinery, Scaffolding, Weights and Measures? My height certainly inched up over those years, to five feet ten and a half inches, about normal height, and the pimples eventually disappeared. I was painfully shy with girls/women, respectful to my elders, and had absolutely no idea how to communicate with my peers. The only skill I seemed to have was my smart mouth, which unfortunately was wedded to a defensive, juvenile mind-set. Few people liked me, because I tried to impress people with my wit, but that, alas, usually took the form of a casual, funny, cruel, put-down. When I did find someone who sort of accepted me, I scared them away by trying to immediately build or claim a forever friendship.   

Ern still ruled my life, and I tried to be a dedicated public servant, and began to count up how much superannuation I might expect when I retired at age 65. I took out life insurance, which would mature at age 65, giving me an extra financial bonus to sweeten my golden years. At no stage did I ever contemplate leaving the safety of the public service, except the once, when I was offered a position selling encyclopaedias door-to-door. I rang Ern, and he told me not to do it, so of course I didn’t.

 I was not just a virgin with women, but with life. Ern had convinced me of my stupidity and laziness, so I had no ambitions or expectations of myself, and I accepted that any other breathing organism was smarter than me, better-looking than me, and definitely better-dressed than me, with the possible exception of oysters.

My pimple anxiety disappeared (along with the pimples) at or near my nineteenth birthday, only to be replaced with a much greater fear: by age 20, every one of my five brothers had lost all or most of their hair. I was nineteen years of age, and I had NEVER had a serious girl friend, except for my chaste and short-lived relationship with Lorraine. Certainly my body registered biological urges, but I didn’t even have a clue as to what to do with them. (Yes Aunt Agatha, I DO have a better understanding of those THINGS now).

At work, I was an adequate clerk, without ever being totally committed, dedicated or competent. Someone told me that the way to promotion in the public service was to apply for classified position in remote areas, so I submitted several applications for positions (mainly with the Department of Main Roads) at centres such as Longreach, Mitchell, and Barcaldine. Unfortunately, no one ever told me about such things as position descriptions or selection criteria, so my standard application was usually something like:

‘Dear Sir,

I wish to apply for the position of Registrations Clerk in the Longreach office of the Department of Main Roads. I have always wanted to live in Longreach.

Yours sincerely,

Norman Wotherspoon.’

My imagination, my creativity, loitered, untapped, somewhere deep below my conscious mind. I wrote home often, but my words were empty, dreary, products of the self I believed I was.

Here is an excerpt from a letter written in 1961:

‘I believe that I told you of my temporary promotion in my last letter, and it takes effect from next Tuesday. The new job, which at the time being I am learning in the afternoons at work, is very interesting, as all jobs to which we are new generally are. It is a very important one, as the clerk who is going away, Mr Saunders, is second in charge of the records section, and the man who is in charge of the records section, Mr Mackay, is third in charge of the whole clerical section, which covers about sixty odd people. It is a very responsible job, if only temporary, and it will, I think, keep me flat out for the three weeks I am on it. It consists of opening the mail in the mornings, and sorting out the letters, including the cheques, and so on and so forth. After this I have to sort papers which I then file, dealing with correspondence and, if the chief, (Mr Hilless, Chief Inspector of Machinery) wants a certain file, I find it for him. I am also to file anything on the staff files, and I think this is the most responsible job of all, for these are all confidential, and it comprises a file on every member of the Machinery, Scaffolding, Weights and Measures Department in the whole State.’

I cringed when I read that.

Even then I had a strong social justice streak, even though I never knew it by that name. For me, it was the principle of sticking up for the underdog, perhaps because I was something of an underdog myself.

The social club ran a table tennis tournament, but, even though the social club was run entirely by women, table tennis was largely dominated by males. The males decreed that it would be a men only competition, which upset all of the girls on staff, not just those few who played table tennis. (In those days, women and girls were only employed in the public service as typists, stenographers, tea ladies and switchboard operators, with a very few exceptions for doctors, scientists and the like, so they had very little clout in our office).

Norm took up the cudgels on behalf of the women and girls, only to find that his army of women melted away in any discussions with the hierarchy. This was partly due to the opposition of the head typist, Win, and the fact that very few of the girls ever had direct contact with chief clerks or other senior staff.

I won the case, and girls were allowed to enter the tournament, and were given generous handicaps, because all of the better players could beat all of the girls convincingly. Somehow, I was drawn in the first round against the top woman player, who could beat me without a start, and who was given three points a game on me. So, I won the war, but in so doing was eliminated in round one. Oh, the price of justice!

Looking back at the young Norm in those first four years of work, I realise that I wasn’t a particularly nice person, almost friendless, with little thought to the future other than to keep my job until I retired. From the age of seventeen I was constantly checking the tables that showed my anticipated superannuation payout at age 65. Ouch. I have also come to understand that I would have become much the same as the people in the Department who were close to retirement age. They were sad but gentle men, some of whom had served in World War II, others who had been too old to serve. Most of them had spent their entire working lives in this Department, rising very slowly, and never to great heights.

If major changes had not altered the direction of my life, I believe I would have become the man I wrote of in the poem that opens this chapter. Thoreau put it better, and more simply, when he wrote that: “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”