. . . . A Million Monkeys

 

 

 I saw one advertized in the local paper for a ‘Fellows Secretary’ 

in an Oxford College. The duties, as

stated in the advertisement, sounded within the realms of my

possibilities (although audio typing had not yet come my way) and I

applied for it. I was asked for an interview on a Friday afternoon, just

after lunch. Most Oxford Colleges are beautiful and awe-inspiring,

and this one was no exception. Ever since I had read Jude the

Obscure I felt complete empathy with him over his desire to be at

Oxford University. Now, I felt, too, that being part of a College, in any

capacity would be an incomparable experience. 

 

The interview was short. (At the time I didn’t know that most

academics have absolutely no notion of how to converse or

communicate easily with their non-academic fellow men, and that

they even seem to have some difficulty with each other). I was asked

why I had applied for the job and explained my Jude feelings. The

Bursar explained the salary scale. My empty secretarial record for

the past twenty years apparently put me on a Scale 2 basis, a salary

which is somewhere comparable, I discovered, to that obtained

working on the sweet counter at Woolworths four days a week. The

College Secretary, a woman, was also present at the interview, and

she seemed to be on my side. I did hear afterwards that she had

described the said post as a job which a trained monkey could well

do, and perhaps in me she saw such a one. The following day I had a

letter offering me the job. I accepted, then had ever increasing

anxiety about it all. 

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My first OU exam was in October, involving hours

of study, and the thought of that and learning the names of twenty

seven Fellows, and the office routine, in addition, seemed all too

much. I panicked and cancelled the acceptance. But this was not to

be. I was persuaded that I would manage very well (remember the

monkey) and on the last day of August 1982, I started. The Fellow’s

Secretary’s office was a large cupboard off the Principal’s Secretary’s

office, and that is where I spent my days for the next year.

I had forgotten during my years as a housewife about office life –

its trivialities, its jealousies, and its absurdities. In this College these

took place in exactly the same way as they do everywhere else.

Everyone, in whatever pecking order, worries about their own

prestige and importance, to themselves and to everyone else. The

largest worry is, it seems, that the boss/master/chief/bigwig might

not appreciate the sacrifices, hard work and late hours put in by

subordinates who recognize their own worth, but who are frantic

that it might not be recognized by high-ups or at any rate those

higher up than themselves. And it was from this particular worry that

the tension in my office arose. The College Secretary, instrumental in

hiring me, had been at the College for many years. She felt herself,

I’m sure, to be absolutely everything the academic staff could wish

for – an agony aunt, a confidential friend, a nanny, a dining

companion and primarily, of course, an efficient and reliable College

Secretary. In short, indispensable.  

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Throughout history many wars

have fought and lives lost over territorial rights and in offices, if

territories are not clearly defined, although lives are not actually lost,

tempers frequently are. The above College Secretary would not, or

could not, delegate any interesting or responsible work. Underlings,

viz me, were left therefore with copy typing, checking lists, or filing

student application forms, all which could have been done by the

aforementioned monkey, as she rightly observed. She was also a

woman given to dramatics. She swirled a lot, rushing hither and

thither tearing at her hair and making pronouncements of a vaguely

threatening nature about what she was going to say to this or that

don when next encountered. When faced with him however, she

never did, as far as I know, say anything of the sort.

One of my duties was to type letters from an audio machine. My

previous secretarial work had not included this skill but after several

attempts to coordinate the taped message with the foot pedal, and

then to type correctly what the voice dictated, I mastered the art.

The Fellow who dictated these letters was delightful, with a luxurious

voice, pleasing to the ear. In fact, this Fellow was altogether most

pleasing and I believe most of the female staff ( I can’t say for the

one female don) were secretly in love with him. He behaved in a way

that was Christian and altruistic. He was always polite, always kind

and helpful wherever he could be, to anyone, regardless of where

they came in the hierarchy. If I sound over-enthusiastic about this

man, perhaps it is because these qualities were so apparent in him,

whereas in others they were remarkably lacking.

It was difficult to resume a secretarial role again after the very

different one as the lady of the manor in the intervening years. The

secretary’s role, I declare, is both humble, subservient and

indiscriminate. A secretary can be anyone from seventeen to

seventy-one. She should be able to type, take shorthand, and make

the tea. She can have no previous experience or many years

experience. She can be efficient or inefficient. But basically, she is

just the secretary, and when she leaves someone as good or bad will

fill her place. She has as little personal identity as a forgotten wife.

The optimum hope, I suppose, for a single (or married) secretary

could be to marry the boss. Otherwise, having come to grips with the

particular office she is in and its own routines, Shangri-la has been

reached.

She is also the butt of many a smutty joke. An American man,

working in an Oxford University, told me what he thought to be a

hilarious story of how he came by his secretary. Sorting through

hundreds of applicants applying for the job, he short-listed five. After

interviewing them all he had no notion of which one to choose. They

all had good references and, apparently, equally good secretarial

skills. So, he enlisted the help of a male colleague. “Which one do

you think I should choose?” he asked. “Well, if it were me,” said his

friend “I would choose the one with the biggest tits.” That was the

way his present secretary got the job, which obviously proves skill

and hard work doesn’t always gain just rewards. Not if you are flat-

chested anyway.

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The job itself was dull and routine, as I suspect most jobs are

where responsibility or initiative are unnecessary. But I dreaded the

moments when the routine was altered, and I was summoned to

take down letters in shorthand. These were dictated by dons who

specialized in obscure subjects with pertinent, obscure vocabularies.

As my shorthand was never strong and flowing, words like

macroeconomics, renaissance, rigorous, trenchant, staunch and

many others, completely flummoxed me. Returning to my office I

knew that transcribing my scribbles would be much more than I

could manage. Sometimes I took the shorthand home and tried to

decipher it at the kitchen table. I would in desperation ring my friend

Judy, who works in another college office, and ask her what she

thought my outlines could possibly be. Or did she, by any chance,

know anything significant that had happened in Venice or Florence

circa 1300? She valiantly gave me support but at the end of the

evening, after hours of trying to make sense of it all, the result was

usually totally incomprehensible. With this particular, precise prose,

so familiar to academics and less so to the rest of us, there was

absolutely no chance of substituting in my own words what I could

not decipher. In my youth I worked for an advertising executive

whose downfall was drink. I tumbled to the notion that if I persuaded

him to dictate his letters after lunch when he had consumed large

quantities of alcohol, he became both incoherent and forgetful. I was

then free to type his letters as I wanted to, since he could not admit,

sober the next morning, that he couldn’t remember what he had

dictated the day before.

 

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