I had one which was heavy duty physical work. ok.
No problem. The next two were restaurant, and I received no training. I was so timid & unassertive.
vERY easily embarassed.
I worried what people thought, tried to be polite, extremely concerned with being meek and courteous. I
did not want to do things I was not supposed to do.
Didn't want to seem pushy. Wanted to do well.
I sloshed coffee all over, I was so nervous.
It is possible the customer who said if his wife got
hold of me, meant she would train me. He had no reason to mean anything else. He saw I was not
being trained. She, the owner, slept while I was there. The lady
did not show me anything at all. She would not
show me how to run the register or anything. anything else. You could have sliced the mop water, but I was not allowed to change it. The chili was not of this world. My
friend worked there in summers for college money.
She seemed to like it.
Then I took a competitive exam. I really did type
80 wpm. Very few errors, many times no errors.I took shorthand 120-130 wpm.Had a paper award. My Mom dictated to me, and I took dictation off the radio. Had a very old typewriter at home.
Took four years of hs English, typing, General Business, and shorthand. Wanted to go to college.
Knew I would need to work some. Since I had a high apprehension level, I needed to work as little as possible to have more study time, so that meant I needed to be a good secretary. Make money. Dreamer. Typing would
come in handy for term papers, as would the English,
GB would come in handy for check books,
and general knowledge. I was thinking.
My folks
let us watch College Bowl. I loved that show. Betty White's husband , Alan Luden, (dating myself)
was the guy on the show. It had all the big colleges there and they were quizzed.... sort of like Jeopardy.
Well.I was not trying for those really big colleges, but the show was fun. Really exciting. Dad encouraged me
to not go to church so much in order to have time to
study more. He did not say you cannot go. Therefore, I went.
I really was into my church, my religion. Some of the
churches
may not have believed in higher ed for women, but we had a college? Some of them went to college.
When I took the exam for the job, before taking it, I was given a copy of a timed writing. I do not know, really I do not, if it was the one given at the site. That is all I was given. .I didn't need it.
It was an easy test. I was debating at the time about enlisting in
the Army or going to the church 's college . We had one.
I got the job. Big break. All the kids I went to hs with, my classmates left the area for work or college. At least I never saw them.
I didn't know anything about life. Didn't have a car then.
That was the first thing I bought. Boarded for a while
with a couple. The man scared me to death. He was ok.
Had a very mischievious bent.
Anyway, in the office, the boss's office was in a cubicle, one of those with a half wall. My desk was
right against that wall. He would stand there, making
me nervous as a cat. Scared the life out of me.
He smoked cherry scented pipe tobacco. When I smelled that, I looked up and there he was. I knew, just knew, I was going to get fired. I promise you one person could
have done all the work there in the steno pool. I would
have been better off if they had worked me to death.
If anyone had said "Boo, " I would have gone through the ceiling.
I had very little otj training, it seemed. Maybe it was lack of feedback. I tried to see what the others did.
No one told me if I had certain people to work for, or much of anything.
They were not really vicious . Just really relaxed.
I practiced typing a lot to keep busy, when I had nothing to do. I studied the index of a book to learn
all I could about filing. We did have this in GB.
Well, it is important. Not a lot to it, but you surely can
mess up if things are misplaced. I was as tense as could be. I must have
typed 500 or a 10000 wpm when I left there. LOL.They
possibly thought I was doing office work when I was typing. I never thought of that. I had to do something. Simply had to.
I worked in that office two years. Longest darned two years of my life. Horrible. It was a State job.
I left the area awhile. Then we moved back to a neighboring county. I again took the test. Again, it was
very easy.No. You liars. I am not retarded. I did not have a copy of any work test. I still typed really well, and practiced my shorthand.
In the meantime, I had studied a secretarial
correspondence course. It talked about office etiquette, dress, grooming, and all that good stuff.
I was always well groomed. I tended to wear a lot of
perfume. It said things like don't chew gum, which
everyone did anyway. Said don't polish your nails
at the office. We just touched up if we had a chip.
Never, never apply lipstick in public. Everyone did.
Don't wear tons of m
If you don't want to read all of it, read the last paragraph.
At this job, I got to work. I really got to do actual work and a lot. I did very well.
I advanced on the job. There was plenty of work for everyone. I received some input and feed back.