week 11 - work

Life for me as a teenager was all about fun! I was even lucky enough to obtain a job where I could continue that motto.

In August 1978 I was in year 11 at St Mary’s College Ipswich. My mother had told me I either had to stay at school or get a job. Since I was unable to do what I really wanted which was nursing I was looking for office work. My mother informed me one day that I had an appointment at Medical Benefits Fund (MBF) for an interview there.

It was August school holidays and on this day I went by train to Brisbane. The personal officer – Mrs Evans – was just like headmistresses from school. That screw up unsmiling face and the stand over you attitude. After a brief talk with her, she sat me down to do an aptitude test. Then it was back home again with details to call her the next day.

I rang the following day and she told me that I hadn’t gotten the job. Oh well, can’t say I was too disappointed I was enjoying the fun that school afforded me. That was all to change later that day when Mrs Evans rang back and offered me another position they had there. So that is how I came to spend the next roughly 9 years working at MBF.

Before starting work I had to go and collect all my books and things from school. I went up to the convent and knocked on the door. When Sr Johnston came down and I told her I was leaving as I had obtained a job, you would of thought by the smile on her face that she had won lotto. She even came to with me helping to pack up my belongings!!!

Monday the first day at my new job. I remember being so excitely nervous. I had to catch the 6.30am train from Ipswich to Central. Luckily I spotted a couple of friends and was able to sit with them taking my mind off what was about to happen.

Mrs Evans took me across the road from MBF’s main building to tatterstalls building and onto the first floor. This is where claims filing department was situtated. There were probably about 20 people on the floor of varying ages. I was introduced to Flo Warpole my supervisor. Flo in turn introduced me to everyone and also Kym, Helen, Tanya and Caroline who I would be working closely with.  

The work I had to do was very strenuous….not. What it entailed was a mail boy would come with a   list of files that were needed in other departments and we would have to have them ready to be picked up at 11am and 3pm. All the files were kept in the basement in compactor bays. We would also have to put back any files that came back.

Now why it took 5 of us to do this work I will never know. Out of an 8 hour day we worked at most probably an hour. The room we were in, in the basement had a locked door so anything was on. We would crochet, knit, sing, play hide and seek and have tea parties. Just about anything you could imagine we did. It certainly was a lot more fun that I thought it was going to be!

After a year or so MBF bought another building across the road so we were moved to it but again we were in the basement or dungeon as we called it. Due to the very archic lift we always knew when someone was coming and could look busy.

Now the only floor that MBF didn’t occupy in this building was the ground floor. The contained the entry and a newsagency. All the older women in claims filing use to buy casket tickets from there and have them stuck on their desks. One day Tanya went to the phone box in the entry and rang one woman from up there (they were on the first floor of the new building). She told the woman she was from Golden Casket and that she had won. At first the woman didn’t believe her but Tanya rattled off her numbers, which of course she had copied earlier. Luckily afterwards she was very understanding to find out it was a joke.

Helen that worked with us was a real character. Helen was from a tradional Greek family. Her whole purpose in life was to get married and at 22 was considered over the hill. Each Friday would see Helen race out at lunch time to spend her whole pay on new clothes, coming back to give us a fashion parade of which taffeta creation she had purchased that week. I am sure none got worn more than once to the Greek Club which is where her parents would drag her each weekend to scout for a man.

Helen had some strange habits. Being Greek she had very oily skin and it was nothing to see Helen leant over the urn in the tea room steaming her face. She would also have a lot of “parties” – nutrimetics, clothes etc. We would all get invited and her mother would put on this huge array of Greek Baking…omg it was to die for. It would be really funny though. Most of the time I would go with Caroline to these events and when walking down Helen’s street the whole street would be out to see Helen’s Australian friends. Her mother had told everyone we were coming haha.

Helen’s mother even though she had been in Australia for nearly 30 years couldn’t speak English. It was nothing for Helen, her two sisters and father to come home and find Mormans or SDA there praying for them all.

Sadly Helen never did get married. Being the eldest in her family she had to give permission for her sisters to marry before her. Her middle sister even marrying the man that was brought out from Greece for Helen.

So as you can see life in claims filing was never dull!!!

After two and a half years of working in this section I was then transferred to branch mangement. My role here was to liason with the health department which had a team working at MBF checking claims and the running of the company. There were 3 guys – Tony, who was the first gay guy I ever met, John who played water polo for Australia and Paul the electronics geek.

These 3 guys were hiliarous. Again a section where not much work was done and I would have to go on “field trips” with them. Our “field trips” consisted of scouring stores for the best stereo we could find for me and whatever they needed to buy as well. Department heads were always complaining about the amount of laughter and noise coming out of the office we were all working in. Maybe it had something to do with the computer games we were playing, although Atari type ones they were a lot of fun.

About a year or so after starting with them, it was time for them to move on and me to as well. I had been trying for years to move out of home and now had the opportunity. I got a transfer to MBF’s Caloundra branch as 2ic.

This was a whole new ball game. I loved the interaction with customers and the constantly changing claims that had to be done. It was only a small branch with myself, Denise the manager and Janelle the part timer. I spent nearly every lunch hour on the beach – swimming in summer and just sitting in the sun in winter. What more could a girl ask for.

It was the type of place that opened your eyes to different views and the goings on of the world. It was while working here that I met my first mail order bride. It was an ex priest who brought her over and kept her with him all the time, never seeming to let her out of his sight and she had to do what he said.

There was also the woman who couldn’t read or write. Her husband use to write notes for her to hand to people with what she wanted and give her the correct money for everything. I can recall when there was a price rise once and she didn’t have the correct money, the poor thing went into a panic and didn’t know what to do. We had to calm her down and then advised her to maybe talk to her husband and wrote it down for her. I never knew there were people that couldn’t read until meeting her. It shows just how much ignorance I had to the world around me.

Then there was the old guy who I had to call the cops to come and remove. I was branch manager and he had come in and wasn’t getting a refund of a claim he submitted. He decided to go ape and throw everything he could reach at me, then sat down and said he wasn’t leaving until I gave him money. Needless to say he moved when the cops came and didn’t have any money at all.

After a few years at Caloundra I again got a transfer. This time to Indoorpilly branch as I got married to Peter and moved back to Ipswich.

Indoorpilly branch was a lot bigger than Caloundra. There were 6 full time staff and 1 part timer. I went there as 2ic and enjoyed working with the people there. The office was situated in Myers so whenever Myers were closed for stocktaking we were closed to. The only thing was we still had to go to work. With nothing to do in the branch itself what more could a girl do but shop!!

The staff at Myers would let us wander around the store looking at what was being marked down and we could put it behind the counter to come back and pay for it after the store opened. Boy did we get some bargains!!
Due to Peter and I trying for a baby and having miscarriages I decided to leave MBF and find something part time. My then to be future brother in law Wayne told me about a spare parts shop that might want someone for the office. One day on my way home from MBF I called in. Reg the owner was there and I said who I was and asked if he had anything. With no references other than BIL he asked if I could start the next day. I said no I had to resign and give a weeks notice. I also went on to explain I only wanted to work part time. He asked what hours I wanted and I told him 10 to 2. I asked what the pay would be and he wanted to know what I was on at MBF. I told him my weekly amount and he said fine that’s what he would pay me for 20 hours a week. To say I was shocked was an understatement.

Working for Reg was something of a new experience. By the end of the first day I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.

The day started relatively normal with me heading into the office to start to try and make some sense of everything in there. No paperwork had been done for over 12 months so you can just imagine the mess. I was happy though to be in there and feel like I was making a difference. Later on that day Reg asked if I would take his car and take his 2 girls – who then were around 8 and 10 – to visit their mother. He explained she was in the PA hospital in the psych ward. I thought this was really odd to ask someone to do this but fine I took them. We got there to find she had been transferred to the Royal Brisbane on the other side of town. So off we head over there.

After finally finding a park and entering where we had to go at the royal we find that no, that send her back to the PA. By this time the girls were upset as they still hadn’t seen their mother. I was pissed as this was not what I signed up for. I took the girls back to the shop, explained what happened and said “This is not my job, don’t ask me to do it again!” And he didn’t.

In my time working at Road and Race I got to do a variety of jobs. Apart from the office work, I also got to sell, do deliveries, rep work in the Ipswich area trying to expand the business and deal with the racing side of things with race tyres.

Being in an industrial area and also the nature of the business meant I had to deal with mainly males. As someone who always got on better with males than females this was a lot of fun for me. One time that comes to memory is when Reg turned 40. All the guys decided that they would put in and hire a stripper and get some grog. It was left to me to do the booking for the stripper. I ended up with Miss February from some calendar but what I didn’t tell any of them is that I paid the extra $20 to have a cream pie thrown in Reg’s face at the end of it all. HAHA the look on his face when that happened was priceless.

Now one thing with Reg was that he was the type of person that had to be everyone’s friend. So once I had all the accounts sorted out, it was to find that there were people who hadn’t paid for 12 months. I designed a letter to go out with accounts asking for payments but Reg would vito half of them saying “Oh they will pay eventually”. After a while I had to be tough with him. There were people screaming for money from bills he hadn’t paid and yet here he was with money owing that he wouldn’t ask for!!

This continued for nearly 18 months with me arguing and him saying no. If he saw something he liked for himself he bought it and also would just take money from the till. It got to the stage where he owed more than he had in stock and owing to him. Time for me to bail as I had enough.

I later heard that Reg got someone to invest in the shop. It lasted another 3 years before he took off, hiding stuff on a property so that it didn’t get repossessed. I think I was lucky to leave when I did.