Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

Ahead of him, adjoining the Cockpit, was a kind of booth affair, constructed of hardboard, and featuring the famous hatch spoken of by Jack Lemmon downstairs. It was rather like a temporary booking office in a railway station — a closed, temporary booking office, as it happened, since the hatch was firmly shuttered. Feeling a bit of a fool under the collective gaze of the Catering (Administration) personnel, not that any one of them had so much as glanced up so far as he could tell, Gryce stepped forward and rapped on the shutter with his knuckles.

What followed was a bit of a pantomime in his humble opinion. One of the clerks rose from his desk, crossed directly behind Gryce, entered the Cockpit executive restaurant, disappeared smartly to the right, presumably opened a pass door leading into the hardboard booth affair, threw up the shutter, snapped 'Eleven till one!' and slammed it down again.

Gryce, keeping his head, waylaid him as he re-emerged through the mahogany doors of the Cockpit.

'Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry but I'm not after SSTs!'

Gryce consolidated this bold display of initiative by waving his flimsy copy of the pink check-list and explaining his mission as concisely as possible. The clerk, hissing through his teeth with the air of one who has had just about as much as he can take for one day, snatched the paper from Gryce's hands and once more disappeared into the Cockpit. In a moment he was back, minus the pink check-list flimsy, so that at least indicated some progress was being made.

'You'll have to wait.'

The clerk resumed his seat and, at once returning to his work, took no further notice of Gryce.

Gryce occupied himself at first in pacing to the doors of the Cockpit and back. His shoes squeaked slightly, and although no one looked up and glared at him a sixth sense told him he was distracting people who were trying to concentrate. He ceased his pacing and commenced to fork-lift himself up and down on the balls of his feet. But this too caused his shoes to squeak. Gryce abandoned the diversion and stood stock-still.

He waited a long time. The waitresses in the Cockpit were donning their cheap cloth coats and rummaging about with small packages, probably lard, sugar and so forth which came under the heading of perks from the kitchens. Gryce saw to his surprise that it was nearly on ten minutes to five. Down in Stationery Supplies, if yesterday evening had been representative of the week, there would be a slamming of drawers and a scraping of chairs as one after the other of his colleagues called it a day. Up here in Catering (Administration), and doubtless in the slave-galleys of the tenth and eleventh floors, they soldiered on.

Gryce, watching the red second-hand of the clock over the entrance doors sweep round, found himself in a quandary. If he left now, not only would he be relinquishing his file copy of a pink check-list that officially should never have been taken out of the department, but he would have the embarrassment of drawing attention to himself by approaching, in squeaking shoes, the clerk who had taken it from him and explaining that he would come back in the morning. But if he hung on, he would be late. Gryce was dashed if he could see why he should work overtime on only his second day in a new billet.

He was considering his position when the shutter of the hatch was suddenly flung up and the flimsy pink checklist landed at his feet in a crumpled ball. The fat, wobbling face that glared out at him was vermillion with rage, and so in sharp contrast to the gleaming white chef's hat that crowned it.

'Tell Copeland we've more to do up here than fill in his bloody stupid forms! If he wants to run this department he can come up here and run it, and bloody welcome! If not, he can stick that bumph where the monkey stuck the nuts!'

With that, the shutter was banged down with such force that papers blew off some of the nearby desks. Gryce was very conscious that all eyes were upon him. At least it proved that they were human.

Despite his confusion and concern as he bent to retrieve the despoiled flimsy — he supposed (he would have to consult the Penney twins on this) that a fresh pink check-sheet would have to be made out now and this one consigned to the wpb — he could not help but admire the head of department of Catering (Administration), if that was indeed whom he had just had dealings with. No nonsense here about delegating or buck-passing or being too preoccupied with bumph and paperwork to do the job he was paid to do. His brief was to run the catering operation smoothly and to the best of his abilities, and by heavens if that meant taking his jacket off and supervising the kitchens after a full day at his desk, then take off his jacket and supervise he jolly well would. He had probably, Gryce surmised, been preparing the soup for tomorrow's lunch. And on top of that he had the change-over from luncheon vouchers to SSTs to cope with.

Gryce felt, as a matter of fact, enormous respect for the whole department, although he was fervently glad not be a part of it. In his Air Force days, he had once been sent on a filing course to a camp in North Yorkshire which was also a transit depot. In the next hut there had been a bunch of sergeant fighter pilots who were awaiting posting to Germany or the Far East. They kept themselves to themselves and made it obvious that they felt a cut above the trainee pen-pushers who marched off every morning to learn their trade at school desks. And they were right: they were. They had been where the action was. Gryce did not envy them but he admired them, and that was how he felt about Catering (Administration).

Everyone had gone when Gryce got back to Stationery Supplies. Not surprisingly: it was two minutes past five. The lift had been a long time coming and a crush of people had got on at the ninth and eighth floors, pinning him against the back wall and forcing him to travel to ground level and then wait for the lift to go up again, which despite all his pressing of buttons it had been in no hurry to do.

Gryce was very annoyed. No one had bothered to clear his desk so there were all the papers the Penney twins had dumped on him to be put away somehow. God alone knew where. All the filing cabinets were locked and so was Vaart's desk of which Gryce was only the tenant. You would have thought the Penney twins would have realized that. You would have thought they could have shown a bit of consideration and taken all this bumph under their wing for one night at least, even though they had technically handed over the 'calling-in' side of things to Gryce. Or was that too much to ask?

Then there was the pink check-list flimsy dramatically rejected by the departmental head of Catering (Administration). Gryce had straightened it out a bit but it was badly torn and, being only a carbon in the first place, now practically illegible. But that too had to be put away. Gryce had all this to do before he could even dream of putting on his raincoat.

You tried to show a bit of initiative and at once you were taken advantage of.

As it just so happened, getting the appropriate filing cabinet open was no problem to Gryce. Like the desks, the filing cabinets — or storage cabinets as they were more properly called, to distinguish them from the multi-drawer flat-stacking unit — were all supplied by Comform. Catalogue No. B4B/04885, duo-grey metal, four deep drawers on telescopic rails, recessed handles, standard lock. There was a trick with that standard lock, as Gryce knew of old. By prodding at it with a ballpoint pen, you depressed the retractile mechanism which in nine cases out of ten released the lock-spring. Well: nowhere in the catalogue was any statement made about the B4B/04885 being burglarproof. Fireproof, yes.

But the Penney twins were not to know this little trade secret. Oh, no: for all they knew, Gryce could have been faffing about until six o'clock, trying to find a home for the bumph they had wished upon him. It really was a bit much being left to hold the fort like this, when he had barely been with the firm five minutes.