There’s a box labeled “Archives” in my basement that contains all the notes I’ve made that I was planning to bury, like in a time capsule but it never happened. Flipping through them, one essay jumped out. It was about my early experience of trying to land a new job that hinged on how high my IQ was and my typing skills.
The personnel officer who wore glasses similar to Benjamin Franklin’s pointed me to a chair and barked, “Sit down!” She dropped a set of questionnaire on my lap and thundered, “You will write down your answers, multiple choice, and finish in 15 minutes!” With eyes slit like an executioner’s, she hollered, “I don’t care if it takes you less than 15 minutes; you will wait for the clock to go off, understood? If you are smart and you get them all correct, I’ll give you more tests.”
What am I doing here? Like a lost pusakal (stray kitten), I obeyed and completed the test questions. Swaying her shoulders like a disgruntled cowgirl or Doris Day in Calamity Jane, she twitched her mouth at me and said, “Hmm, you got a perfect score.”
“Now, let’s try your typing skills.”
I froze. Typing was my waterloo. Even Napoleon would have buckled under if he were made to type using this latest office invention in the 1960s called “Selectric.” It was touted to have a select brain shaped as a rolling ball that spins the letters on a paper as fast as the runaway bus in the movie Speed.
“Ah, Madame,” I blipped. “Can you give me a manual typewriter? I’m not used to this electric machine.”
“It’s Mademoiselle,” she corrected. “What are you saying? You’re going to make me borrow a discarded machine and make an exception for you?”
I stared back at her, wide-eyed, with the dumbest look.
“Oh, all right,” she replied. “I will order one from office supplies.”
She pressed a button and a younger, more friendly-looking staff entered her office. They spoke in a huddle and then she announced, “You sit tight; they will send up a manual typewriter.” When the typewriter was delivered, she cranked the alarm clock and sat it next to the desk.
I caught my fingers in the keys and hit the wrong keys while the clock went tick… tick… tick. When the alarm went off, she once again barked, “Stop!”
She looked at my paper, shook her head, looked at my paper again and shook her head, “Why is your typing so horrible? Did I scare you?”
Me, scared? It was a walk in the park — a cemetery park.
Suddenly, the she-ogre smiled and whispered, “Shh, I will give you another chance. You take the typing test without the ticking clock.”
I failed again.
“What’s the matter with you? Your score is still lousy!”
This was my chance to speak up. “Because you rattled me. It’s bad enough that I still have to take an entrance exam despite my overseas experience. I hate typing tests. I never pass it but I can guarantee you, I can type as fast as a bullet train.”
And miracle of miracles, she laughed. “You’re hired! Tomorrow, you report to a unit.”
What’s a unit?
She pushed me out of her office and said, “You will get proper briefing tomorrow. Be here at 6:30 a.m.”
Was she nuts? I would have just gone to bed at that hour.
“One year,” I said. I was giving myself one year to stay in this job.
The next day, I got the shock of my life. In this office, work began at 7 a.m. and ended at 3:30 p.m. Not only that, coffee break was only 15 minutes and lunch limited to 30 minutes. It didn’t make any sense to me.
“One year,” I thought. Definitely, one year.
I was briefed by several departments before the she-ogre caught up with me. She announced, “You will have your final briefing with the health manpower development adviser, Dr. Ewald Kapal, who is temporarily substituting for Dr. Eric Goon who is on study leave in Dublin, Ireland.”
“Congratulations!” she beamed. “You are now an international public servant.”
When I got to the parking lot, I sat quietly in my car and assessed the situation. “Should I accept this job? I still have another interview in another company and they have far decent working hours than this.”
I decided to go to the other interview.
Peanuts, I breezed through the interview because there was no typing test. “Come back on Monday to sign your appointment papers. You will be the assistant public relations officer and your main job is to handle the press and the media.”
Sunday morning, my phone rang. “I’m so sorry to call you at this time but the board has decided to relocate the company to Indonesia; we won’t be hiring any new staff anymore.”
Oh no. I was stuck with the she-ogre and their ungodly hours?
“One year,” I muttered. It sounded like a pledge.
I stayed for over a decade at The World Health Organization, a UN agency/coordinating authority on international public health. It was one of my best training grounds, enlivened by talented and loving personalities who enhanced and painted a rainbow in my world.
And humbly, I ate crow.
Most job offers do not require typing skills anymore. It’s outmoded. It’s history.
But, not my typing.